


When You Wake Up, The World Will Come Around

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: 2006, Angst, Bisexuality, Emotional Manipulation, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Kidfic, M/M, Mutual Pining, Single Dads Exist Too, Slow Burn, Smut, but not between the boys, unplanned parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-06-14 12:20:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 58,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: Patrick is a single dad at twenty-two, getting by (but barely). Pete arrives at just the right - and, somehow, just thewrong- time.Patrick can't fall in love with him. Pete's determined to make him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/gifts).



> A birthday gift for the truly wonderful [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind), who asked for mutual pining, kidfic and something set around 2006. I've smushed all of those things into a blender and vomited out this!
> 
> Mostly, because there's precious little Young Dad Patrick content and I'm hungry for it. Anyway... Shall we?
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/28680381527/in/dateposted/)  
> 

For Patrick, there are three defining moments in his life.

The first, an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in October during his freshman year. His music teacher calls him to one side and tells him about the advancement program for gifted musicians. He adds, smiling, with the kind of irreverent casualness that means it’s a big deal that Patrick has a place. Patrick, hands folded neatly on a fake-beech desk, the plastic whorling chipping away at the corners and letters scratched in ballpoint pen like scars, stares at the poster of Miles Davis on the wall. Mr Compton talks about college paths and scholarships. Patrick, fifteen and barely able to acknowledge anything beyond the next weekend, glows the whole way home. So buoyed with pride is Patrick that, like Elliott, he’s waiting for the front wheel of his bike to lift and point him straight to the stars.

The second comes in the faculty office of the Ryan Center at Northwestern University. Three faces set above three identical half windsors, sports jackets in pale colours and faces-like-his-dad’s smiling at him across modern oak. Patrick, seventeen now, wears his big brother’s suit and a too-wide tie he borrows from his grandpa. Everything itches but the smile hurts his face, pinched into the corners of his lips like badly executed plastic surgery. He’s done it. A full scholarship. Everyone tells him his future’s bright, that there’s nothing between him and the world now.

The third arrives some time later, a hospital room that smells of antiseptic and, inexplicably, _green_. A bundle placed into his arms that he wasn’t expecting but adores nonetheless. Some people say ‘accident’, but Patrick, twenty, will never say anything but ‘surprise’.

Three moments, spanned across half a decade. Patrick thinks three might be his lucky number.

*

“Listen,” he says, the earpiece of his phone fizzles and cracks and he hopes it doesn’t choose today to die because, God only knows, there’s not enough cash in the checking account to replace it, “I _understand_ what you’re saying it’s just — I could do with some help, you know?”

He’s packing a bag as she replies, tone clipped with barely repressed irritation. Hat, diapers, sippy cup… He doesn’t need to listen to the actual words she’s framing to get the idea.

“Becky, c’mon, _please_ ,” he pauses to pinch the bridge of his nose, “well, what do you _think_ I need it for? Food! Heat! Fucking _shoes_!”

“‘Kin’ soooos!”

“What? No! Of _course_ he didn’t repeat what I just said, don’t be _ridiculous_ —” he pauses to raise two fingers to his temple, thumb flexing as he mimes blowing his brains out across the kitchen counter. He checks the fridge, fumbles for a pen and writes _milk_ on the notepad by the door, “— listen, can you pay for the shoes, or not? No? Look, fine, whatever. I’ve got to go — what? Oh, sure. Dexter, come here, buddy,” he holds the phone out towards his son, “say hi to mommy.”

It shouldn’t hurt, the way Dexter’s eyes light up. The way he flexes fat little fingers like he can hug the disembodied voice through a speaker shouldn’t invoke the sensation of stepping into an open elevator shaft. But it does. Daddy is boring, the harbinger of broccoli and bedtime and limited television. Mommy is made entirely of Disney movies and play barns and trips to the park. Patrick would like to repeat — _again_ — that this is not the way he imagined things working out.

“Okay, little guy, say goodbye,” he says. Dexter’s lip wobbles, his fists clench and he teeters on the brink of a temper tantrum. Patrick is about fifteen different kinds of done with this shit for one morning. He whisks the phone away regardless — they were late ten minutes ago, now it’s just bordering on seeming early for tomorrow — and ends the call. “Yep, we’ve got to go, he starts daycare today. Thanks for, well, _nothing_ , I guess.”

He thumbs the end call button before she can object. The bowl of oatmeal on the coffee table is conspicuously empty while Dexter is suspiciously clean. Investigation can wait until some other time. He shrugs on the jacket that was worn out a year ago and shoves on his sneakers. “C’mon, my dude. Time to go.”

Across the room, Dexter plants his feet (in the outgrown shoes Patrick paid thirty dollars for _six_ _weeks_ ago — seriously, is it normal for a kid’s feet to grow that fast? Should he be referring him to the doctor so they can check for elephantiasis?) and shakes his head. “No.”

“Yes,” says Patrick, already halfway across the living room. The clock on the wall informs him that time is not favoring him by moving backwards just this once. “Daddy’s gonna be late for —” he pauses, Dexter held aloft and at arm’s length as Patrick eyes him suspiciously. Slowly, he brings him closer, nose pressed to the padding of his cotton-covered and diapered rear end. The stench is ungodly. “Oh, _come on_ , dude. _Seriously_?”

*

Patrick’s got this.

If he walks fast — okay, if he runs — and takes the shortcut through the park, he might make it to work on time.

Alright, realistically, that ship sailed ten minutes ago, but he could yet attain still-late-but-early-enough-to-avoid-losing-an-hour’s-pay. The stroller thumps over every bump in the sidewalk as he darts through a group of yoga mommies in sweatpants completing the early morning Mommy and Me class. Dexter howls, the kid is _puce_ , wilfully ignoring the puffing shh-shh-shh noises Patrick is wheezing around an impending asthma attack.

Patrick hasn’t got this, not at all, he’s lying to himself and everyone around him, but he’s willing to fake it til he makes it. That’s been his life motto for the past year and a half and he’s not ready to give up on it yet. Probably. He’s pretty sure he’s not ready to give up on it. Today, at least.

“I _know_ ,” he’s on the phone again, the handset jammed between his shoulder and ear, both hands curled around the handles of the stroller, “seriously, mom, don’t worry about it. I _know_ , but we’re gonna be fine, you know? Look, I’m almost at the daycare center now, I’ll call you tonight, ’kay? Let you know how he — okay. Yes. Love you, too, mom. Gotta go. Mom, I — I gotta — _yes, mom_. O — okay, I — mom, _bye_.”

It’s not until he’s at the door of Lullabye Daycare, unstrapping Dexter from the stroller and groping to shove his hat someplace safe, that Patrick realizes, stomach lurching and heart kicking basslines against his ribs. He forgot the fucking diaper bag.

They linger, father and son, two heads of dark blonde hair and two pairs of serious blue eyes considering the bank of buttons and buzzers by the front door. Patrick has never felt closer to crying than he does right in this particular moment. He presses a kiss to Dexter’s soft little cheek and reaches for the buzzer labelled ‘office.’

“Well, buddy. Shall we get this over with?” Dex yanks down the peak of Patrick’s cap, blinding him entirely, then shoves a finger up his nose.

The voice that crackles over the intercom is bright, the perky presentation of a saturday morning TV show host. “Good morning, can I help you?”

“Yeah, uh. Dexter Stump. Uh,” he bites his lip and tries again, “I mean, it’s not Dexter speaking right now,” he considers slamming his face into the brick wall, but suspects death wouldn’t be instantaneous, “I’m Patrick. His, uh — his dad. Dexter’s dad. Patrick Stump.”

If there was limerence and karma and cosmic balance, a sinkhole would open up right now and swallow him whole — pausing precisely long enough to allow him to deposit Dexter safely on the edge. Instead, the voice chirps again, “Okay, hi! Come on in.”

So, with no alternative option available, that’s precisely what he does.

There’s a lot of people inside. A confusing crush of moms and dads and perky daycare workers in cobalt blue polo shirts emblazoned with the company logo. Social interaction has never been Patrick’s strong suit but since Becky left, since the apartment reduced to Patrick, a mostly non-verbal eighteen-month-old and endless repetitions of the Teletubbies, things have become close to unbearable.

There were friends once, people he could hang out with. He supposes he thought they were mutual and that, like a timeshare condo, they’d split the social side of things down the middle. But Becky told her side of the story first and Patrick kept quiet for fear of losing Dexter and the invitations to hang out dried up like summer rainfall. He still isn’t sure what it is, exactly, that she told them but, like, no one’s called Child Protective Services yet, so he assumes it can’t be _too_ bad. It’s fine, though. Really. Friends are probably overrated.

Dexter reaches out for the mural on the wall.

His chubby fingertips brush the stylized cartoon of a winged sheep set against a backdrop of swirling stars, “‘S’at?”

“The sheep?” Patrick asks softly, fingertip tracing the lines of the wings. He smiles. “You like the sheep, buddy?”

“Mr Stump?” the voice from the intercom has a face; dark hair, dark eyes. She’s pretty in a hipster way, taller than him — though honestly, that’s not a challenge — ponytail swishing behind her. She’s not the manager he met when he visited. “Hi! I’m Vicky, I’m one of the managers here at Lullabye and you,” she pauses to touch Dexter’s cheek, her perfume sweet and delicate. Dexter buries his face in Patrick’s neck and sinks the sharp little nails that Patrick keeps forgetting to trim into his cheek, “you must be Dexter!”

The thing about being a parent is that it’s possible to become hugely adept at pretending everything is _just fine_. As Dexter whines into his ear, Patrick rearranges the puzzle pieces of his face into a honed parody of a smile and coos encouragement. Patrick can go from reticent social pariah to Barney the fucking Dinosaur if his son requires it. “Oh wow, come on, my man. Say hi?”

Dexter shakes his head, hot tears staining Patrick’s shirt as he fists his hands into denim like he knows what’s coming and can stop it within nothing more than the force of the towering will crammed into his tiny body.

“I — I’m sorry,” Patrick stammers, face too hot, “he’s just — I know I said he was, like, _happy_ on the forms and stuff, and he is! Really, he is. He’s just — he gets, you know, kinda shy.”

Vicky smiles and tilts her head to the side, assessing him. Patrick hopes he measures up to whatever this childcare professional expects to see, that he scrapes over the line into ‘adequate parent’. There are moms and dads here in business wear, on their way to _real_ jobs in _actual_ offices. Patrick isn’t even sure his Bowie shirt is clean, but it was cleaner than anything else that came to hand while he dressed Dex with one hand and wrote the grocery list with the other.

“He’ll be fine,” she assures him softly. Patrick’s chest hurts — he’s not sure if this is because he hopes she’s right, or because if she _is_ , that means he’s lost the one person who needs him. “Come on, I’ll take you along to Pete’s room, introduce you to the gang.”

They walk the corridor of chaos; abandoned jackets and bags and ‘please-don’t-go-mommy’ tears. Patrick has approximately twenty feet of brightly colored, plasticated flooring to consider if Pete is a nickname for Peyton or Petra then Vicky is swinging left. Patrick tries not to wince as Dexter’s fingers twist, sting-sharp and burning, into his hair and tug. “Please make daddy look good, ’kay?”

“Pete, come over here.”

Patrick stops, surprised. His eyebrows are raised, his mouth hanging slack enough that he’s aware of it, “Oh! You’re — you’re a —”

 _— dude,_ his brain supplies, helpfully. But, he’s like, ninety-nine percent certain he can’t _actually_ say that, that there are like, equality laws and stuff and he really doesn’t have the cash to risk getting sued. So, instead, he stares, wide-eyed and blush-bright. He manages, somehow, to close his mouth, though. Pete grins, Crest-ad bright and charming, copper eyes twinkling. Two pennies, tossed into a wishing well for good luck.

“A guy? Yeah, last time I checked!” he offers with the kind of shrug that suggests he gets that a lot. Patrick tells himself not to feel embarrassed — this is beyond the realms of normality, he’s allowed to be at least a little surprised — but, judging from the surface temperature of his face, his brain isn’t going to acknowledge that. “So, you brought your little brother in for his first day? That’s super cute, man. Seriously.”

“I’m — I mean, I’m his —”

“ _Pete_ …” Vicky rolls her eyes and gives the word at least a dozen syllables. Pete smiles wider and Patrick is hopelessly stuck somewhere between wanting to hate him and wanting to… do other things to him.

“His dad, I know,” Pete laughs and it’s ugly but Patrick wants to hear it all the time, “I’m just playing with you, dude, come on in.”

(Academically, Patrick knows that he has the capacity to develop a crush on anyone that smiles at him like that; the super in his building, the barista at Starbucks, his mom’s best friend Pam. Academics, however, seem several state lines away from the buzz on his skin, skittering like electric shocks by the way Pete’s eyes crinkle at the corners. Patrick is either crushing, or in the early stages of a heart attack.)

Patrick swallows and pats a hand against Dexter’s rump, for no other reason than to stop himself blurting out something stupid. “This is Dexter. Dex. Is what I call him, mostly.”

There’s crimson in Pete’s bangs; ruby streaked through jet that looks pretty next to the polo shirt and black cargo pants that are already streaked with something pink and sticky. Play doh, Patrick identifies absently. As though he feels the weight of the gaze on his thigh, Pete reaches down and brushes it away with long, tanned fingers. Fingers that don’t wear a wedding ring or the telltale pale indentation of one slipped off for work.

Why is Patrick looking for a wedding ring?

“Well, I’ll leave you to get settled in,” Vicky smiles at Dexter, urged from the safety of Patrick’s shoulder by the pandemonium of preschoolers exploding around them. “Have fun, Dex!”

They consider one another, Patrick and Pete, caught in the midst of children shrieking and tugging at Pete’s polo shirt. Pete holds his arms out expectantly and, for a moment, Patrick almost steps into them. Then he remembers — he’s holding his _son_. _That’s_ who Pete is reaching for. His cheeks are now roughly on par with the surface of Mordor and he’s sure it looks goddamn _gorgeous_ next to his camo print hat.

“Can I?” Pete asks.

“Oh, sure,” Patrick says, in the same second.

Pete’s hands brush his chest as he slides them under Dexter’s arms. Patrick’s feel empty — hollow, lost and aching sore — as he watches a stranger take hold of his son, sick with the knowledge that he won’t hold him again for another nine hours. Dexter, surprisingly, seems relatively okay with this, wide eyes pinned on Patrick.

Dexter has no idea what’s coming, however, so Patrick bites his lip then smiles a smile he’s sure will crack under the slightest pressure.

“Okay,” Pete begins, Dexter on his hip, “I’m the educational lead at Lullabye, we have ten kids in this room. That,” he points to a pile of, Patrick had assumed, children and soft toys, something twitches beneath them and another face, another _male_ face, appears, “is Joe, he’s my right hand man and,” he drops his voice, like he’s letting Patrick in on a conspiracy, “he’s sort of a _legend_ with pipe cleaners and googly eyes.”

“Hi,” Patrick waves, fingers wiggling like a toddler. He immediately feels stupid. Stupid _er_. Why doesn’t he just point out the nearest firetruck or ask Joe if he can see the _really big doggy_ just for good measure?

“Hey, man!” Joe retreats back to the stuffies. “Nice to meet you.”

Pete pauses, his smile widening as he nods to Patrick’s jacket, “Uh, you’ve got a little — a little something…”

Patrick glances in the mirror over the sink. Oatmeal. All over his fucking jacket. At least now he knows where it went. “Oh, for fu — uh, I mean gosh _darn_ it. He’s , uh, probably gonna be hungry...”

He scrapes at it with his fingernails but it’s already set like concrete. Still, at least now he has a reason to toss it into the washing machine, something he’s been meaning to do for a couple of weeks. Months. Whatever. There’s a thin, leather bracelet around Pete’s wrist, two delicate straps woven and peppered with beads. Then there’s ink, so much dark ink, twisting up his forearm and disappearing under his sleeve. Patrick thinks straight thoughts.

“Don’t worry about it,” Pete smiles, different now, softer, “will mom be doing pick up?”

“No,” there’s a rock lodged dead center in Patrick’s chest, hot and hard, “it’s just — just me and Dex. Most of the time, anyway. Mom lives, uh, she lives in Milwaukee. _His_ mom, not — not _my_ mom. My mom lives in — in Glenview which is a lot closer than Milwaukee but, like, you don’t care about that,” Patrick would like, very much, to die right now, “I should go — get to work, you know?”

“Okay, you gonna say goodbye to daddy, Dex?” Dexter, hearing the words ‘goodbye’ and ‘daddy,’ screams like he thinks Pete intends to butcher him and harvest his organs. Instinctively, Patrick reaches for him but Pete brushes him away.

“Just go,” he advises, nodding towards the door, “call in ten minutes if you like, I promise he’ll be _totally_ settled in. They always do this the first few times.”

Patrick hesitates, feet lead-heavy and frozen. Working full time really hasn’t been so bad when his mom was doing to the childcare part. Leaving Dex with grandma is fine, it’s normal. But grandma has used up all of her compassionate leave and her boss’s patience and, Patrick reminds himself, grandma has a mortgage to pay. He blinks hard and makes a wish that he won’t cry like a jackass in front of stupid Pete and his stupid-pretty eyes.

“Yeah,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to Dex’s forehead and feeling his heart shatter like glass at the desperate way his son tries to cling to him, “have — have a great day, little buddy. Daddy’ll be back real soon, ’kay? Love you, you know. My best boy.”

Dexter is sobbing and Patrick isn’t far from joining him as he untangles tiny hands from his collar and moves towards the door. Pete’s still smiling — sympathetic now — bouncing Dexter as he shushes him softly. “He — you need to sing the diaper song when you change him, okay? I wrote the words on the form but it’s basically just Space Odyssey with the prominent nouns changed to ‘poop’, you know? Poop control to Major Poop?”

Pete’s grin widens. “I will. Hey, don’t forget to ask Vicky for the webcam code. You can watch him all day if you want to,” he turns away, Dexter on his hip, hands straining towards Patrick over a broad shoulder. Patrick wants to warn him that Dexter can, and will, cry so hard he pukes but he doesn’t want to have to find a new daycare on the first day. “Aright, Dex, my man. Tell me, what are your thoughts on dinosaurs?”

Patrick closes the door behind him, deadening the sound of Dexter’s desperate sobbing but not drowning it out completely. It follows him down the hallway and Patrick is sure he’s the worst dad — worst _human being_ — in this or any other universe. At the office, Vicky hands him the login codes for the daycare webcam and tells him he can find Dexter in the Jellybean Room. Patrick makes it out of the front door, across the street and two blocks closer to work before he breaks down.

Embarrassingly, he’s still sort of sniffling when he passes through the staff door at XO Sports & Fitness, blinking away tears as he struggles out of his jeans and shirt and into the too-tight pseudo referee shirt and poly-blend sweats he wears five days a week. They even make him wear a whistle like they think it’s _charming_ and _cute_ rather than _humiliating_ and _assholey._ It sits against his stomach, hanging from his lanyard with his name badge and security pass.

Patrick has often questioned if it’s wise to place the tender windpipes of employees between coked-up sneaker thieves and access to the stockroom. No one has ever given him an adequate answer.

“Good afternoon,” Andy observes, like an asshole. Andy was way cooler before he got himself promoted to floor supervisor. Then again, Patrick was way cooler before he became a single parent so they’re pretty much two for two. Yeah, he can make sports references. He doesn’t _understand_ them but he can _make_ them. “Late again?”

It’s on the tip of Patrick’s tongue to bark back _no fucking shit, Sherlock_ but he likes paying rent and having food in the refrigerator, so he smiles, tight and professional. “Dex’s first day at daycare.”

Andy’s look rests squarely in the middle of sympathy and not really giving a shit. To be fair, that’s Andy’s facial expression at least eighty percent of the timePatrick gets it, sort of, it’s hard for Andy to imagine the impact one tiny kid could have on his ability to get his shit together and get to work in the morning. But he’s trying, clearly, as he shrugs, “Try to get in early tomorrow, make up for it, you know?”

He means he won’t dock Patrick’s pay which is sweet of him. But there’s about as much chance of Patrick making it in early tomorrow (or any other day before Dexter graduates high school) as there is of him painting his ass blue and streaking across Wrigley Field. He nods, though. Better than laughing hysterically.

He eyes his watch and counts down the hours until he can boot up the arthritic computer in the lunch room and see how Dexter is doing.

*

That night, after pick up and dinner smeared onto every surface tiny hands could reach, after playtime, bathtime, storytime and bedtime comes daddy time. It used to be mommy-and-daddy time, two sets of exhausted eyes staring blankly at the same TV screen. Sure, Patrick still felt so tired he honestly wondered how he continued to function, eyes gritty and burning behind the lenses of his glasses.

But at least he didn’t feel quite so lonely.

He picks up Dexter’s toys, lays out their clothes for the next day and spends a little time staring out of the window. The city ticks on around him, an endless pulse of foot-and-road-traffic thundering beyond the glass. It’s not like he was ever a party animal, even before Dexter, but —

The sigh shudders through him like shockwaves, shoulders shaking with the intensity of it. He’s still not sure he did anything _wrong_ , not really. Ill-advised, perhaps. Misleading, almost certainly. But, wrong? No, he’s not willing to accept that just yet, that the very fibres that make him into a whole are somehow woven incorrectly. That shit is for bible camp.

Sometimes, Patrick feels as though he’s on a ferris wheel, that his feet only brush solid ground in fleeting heartbeats before he’s whisked away once more. Not that he’d change it, please understand, not when he can stand and watch the way the hallway light shafts across his sleeping son’s face in the gloom-glow of a bedroom illuminated by an Elmo night light.

He touches his fingertips to the glass and looks up at the sky. Light pollution has the stars running scared, nothing but orange over ink glowing high above them but Patrick makes a wish nonetheless. In fact, he makes it three times.

Three always was his lucky number.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't apologise for this. Pete as a daycare worker? Patrick as the shy single dad? OH YES! 
> 
> You with me? Comments or kudos would be amazing!
> 
> See you next Sunday!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having a toddler is like using a blender... without the lid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, welcome back!
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments and kudos and little notes on Tumblr last week, it's lovely to see that Babydaddytrick made some of you guys smile. This week, we learn how far toddlers like to push their parents, and their uncanny ability to pick the very worst time to unleash a new trick.
> 
>  

“You _really_ like Bowie,” Pete observes during drop off.

Patrick has positioned himself directly under the air conditioning, subtly spreading his arms and wondering if the cold air will dry the thick rings of sweat staining the pits of his shirt. It’s insufferably hot out, Chicago leaping from spring into summer like it’s making a death threat. The city is burning, even Dexter is too hot to object as he shuffles from Patrick’s arms and plops to the floor at his feet, shivering ecstatically under the circulated air.

For a moment, Patrick simply stares at Pete. It’s been at least a year and a half since anyone referred to him as anything other than ‘Dexter’s daddy’ and, sure as shit, no one’s asked him a question about _himself_ since the ink dried on the birth certificate.

He blinks, then remembers that questions require answers and comes up with this gorgeous riposte: “I — uh, yeah?”

He wonders if it’s possible to lobotomize himself with a Crayola (Jazzberry Jam).

Pete is leaning against the cabinet in the corner, forms spread out in front of him and the cap of his pen caught between straight, white teeth. He considers Patrick with a grin, “Thought so.”

“Is this about the diaper song?” Patrick feels he ought to defend himself; a man will do desperate things when his kid seems to have grown four extra feet and has shit on every one of them. “Because that was just —”

Thankfully, Pete interrupts him, a tanned finger pointed square at his chest, “The shirt sort of gives you away, man.”

“Oh,” Patrick glances down and hopes it’s clean, Dexter looks up and offers him a smile full of pearl-white teeth. Patrick can track the bead of sweat making its way under his belt and into the crack of his ass. “I mean, I guess it’s a popular shirt.”

“You wear it a lot,” Patrick is about to point out that that’s just a little fucking _personal_ coming from his kid’s nursery nurse when Pete’s eyes widen, “No! No, I didn’t — I didn’t mean it like that! I just — it seems like you really _like_ wearing it so, like, I just thought…”

Patrick hasn’t flirted with anyone since he was eighteen. He’s not sure what this is, he just knows it makes his heart beat a little faster in freefall trepidation. Patrick smiles and bends to drop a kiss to Dex’s nose, hiding the width of his grin in scruffy blond hair (his and Dexter’s).

“See you tonight, little dude. Daddy loves you,” he tells him, like he’s done every weekday morning for the past three weeks. He straightens and heads for the door, turning as he opens it. Pete is blushing, cheeks flamed the same color as his bangs. Patrick’s chest fizzes, shaken-soda-can fuzz that bursts down into the tips of his fingers. “It’s cool, dude. That sort of _is_ why I wear it.”

For once, he spends the whole walk to work wondering why Pete noticed his choice of shirt and why he felt compelled to comment, instead of contemplating his failures as a father. He wonders if tomorrow is too soon to wear it again.

*

The thing about working in a sports store is that the pay is unsurprisingly mediocre. It’s not quite minimum wage, but it’s pretty close and minimum wage — _one_ minimum wage — doesn’t go all the way to rent, utilities, food, daycare _and_ luxuries like Christmas gifts and new shoes. Patrick tops up where he can, those two years of free-ride music education poured into instrument tuition (drums, guitar, piano — fuck, he’ll teach the ukulele if anyone shows an interest) and, when he can get them, gigs.

They’re not exactly his favorite pastime; up on stage with the Gibson his dad gave him rather than toss it into the trash, a single spotlight on his battered sneakers and too-small shirt. But they usually pay pretty well, and, if he plays the right mix of classic rock and old jazz, there’s usually decent tips.

And what the IRS doesn’t know can’t hurt _him_.

But, gigs require sitters, unless he’s lucky enough to have them fall on a weekend Dexter is staying with Becky. It’s a carefully arranged balancing act of begging his mom, his siblings, his aunts, cousins and the kid who once mowed the lawn at his mom’s house. Professionals are out; that shit costs money and at fifteen bucks an hour, plus tip, it starts to make the gig no longer worth it.

It’s not shaping up to be a good day with Becky throwing an inevitable curveball into a game that’s already on the outs as he struggles across the park towards Lullabye. The logistics are impossible. Patrick has considered them, shuffled them around and re-examined them until his head hurts.

It’s like that stupid puzzle with the chicken, the fox and the bag of grain except everything is Dexter and the boat is on fire.

(Today is brought to you by tension headaches and zero balance checking accounts.)

“Becky, _please_ ,” he has Dexter on his hip as he folds down the stroller with one hand, diaper bag packed and over his shoulder _and_ they’re five minutes early. Until this phone call started thirty seconds ago, he was honestly starting to feel like maybe he was beginning to control the dumpster fire of juggling work and parenthood. “You — you _promised_. You can’t keep _doing_ this to me, it’s not _fair_!”

“Things change, something’s come up,” she says, like it’s not a big deal, “look, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“What’s _come up_?” he demands, jabbing his fingers into the security keys like he can gouge his irritation into the steel. “What, _exactly_ , has _come up_?”

“That,” she informs him, “is none of your business. Can’t your mom take him?”

Patrick hasn’t asked. In honesty, he asks so many times he knows he won’t be adding to it just for a set.

“No. You said _you_ could do it, I — listen,” he pauses to pass his wrist over his brow. He hopes the way the mouthpiece of his phone scrapes against the mesh of his hat sends a nasty little burst of static down the line. “I think we need to talk about child support. It’s been four months, Becky, and you haven’t paid for a single pack of diapers —”

“Are you calling me a bad mom?” her voice is quiet, dangerous. “Is that what this is?”

They’re in the hallway now, the _squeak-squeak-squeak_ of safety flooring in primary colors under their sneakers. Patrick hesitates.

On the one hand, yes, he absolutely does want to call her a bad mom. He wants to recount every time that she wasn’t _there_ , for broken nights and teething and never-ending sickness bugs. He wants to tell her that Dexter woke three times last night, that by the third time he laid on the bedroom floor singing Dear Jessie, he was no longer sure if he was _actually_ conscious or just running entirely on autopilot.

On the other hand, he isn’t stupid enough to know she won’t have an excuse in the form of his own past behavior, a reminder of mutual bedsheets turned to mutual dislike.

“I’m not saying that. But this is _important_ and —”

“Do you have a date?” Becky’s tone is light, friendly, she seems entirely more conversational. His spine stiffens a little as he reaches for the door handle of the Jellybean Room.

They’ve slipped into dangerous territory now, into the conditions they drew that seem more like threats as he smiles cheerlessly at Pete and mouths ‘sorry’ and ‘thanks’ as he hands Dexter over. Dexter doesn’t even whimper, lunging eagerly into Pete’s arms. It’s only been a month but Dexter acts like Pete is Big Bird, Clifford and Dora the Explorer all rolled into one. Patrick feels thoroughly usurped.

“It’s not a date,” he says firmly, face heating as Pete’s eyebrows raise. “Look, it was just a show, okay? I’m just — just trying to bring in a little more cash for Dexter, you know? It’s fine, whatever, I’ll cancel.”

“I see,” she says, “because if it _was_ a date, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Patrick?”

He stays silent and stares at the display of handprint art on the wall. Dexter’s footprint is smudged across the toes, blue paint smeared into the orange of his handprint. Patrick bites the inside of his lip until he tastes copper, sharp and salted, at the tip of his tongue. He can feel the weight of Pete’s stare, the suffocating press of amber eyes into the back of his head as he turns away.

“Okay, well,” she chirps, syrup sweet, “I have to get to work,” she means the research scientist position her degree allowed her to walk into, the degree he helped her to complete by sacrificing his own education to care for their son, “I’ll pick Dex up Saturday, ’kay?”

She hangs up without waiting for him to confirm, his sigh audible as he waits for his heart rate to slow from _imminent cardiac arrest_ to _lowkey panic attack_. He’ll need to call the club on his way to work and —

“You need a sitter?” Pete asks, a smudge of charcoal across one cheek. Patrick wonders, distracted by the way it contrasts with the caramel tone of his skin, how he would look wearing eyeliner. “Sorry I, uh — I wasn’t listening in or anything just… Do you? Need a sitter?”

Patrick is hopeful, close to grabbing Pete by the collar and kissing him if he can fix this, as he says, “Yeah? Do you know someone who could help?”

And Pete, he grins — toothsome and shining — as he says, “Me.”

Patrick blinks at him very slowly. Over his shoulder, he can see Joe frown from over a water table filled with shaving foam. Pete? Well, Pete keeps right on smiling, like it’s the most natural suggestion in the world.

“You?” Patrick queries, imagining _Pete_ in his apartment, on his couch, in his bed. He bites his lip once more at that last one, teeth sinking sore into flesh that’s already pulp-bruised and tender. Pete nods and Patrick rushes back to reality; Pete is the educational lead at a daycare center. Patrick has seen the degree from DePaul on the wall, there’s no way he can afford the personal nannying fees of a college-educated professional. “That’s really kind of you to offer but, like, it’s just a stupid little… I couldn’t. Thanks, though.”

As though he can read Patrick’s mind (oh, please God, _don’t let him be able to read Patrick’s mind_ ), Pete grins a little wider. “Come on, man, I won’t even charge.” Over his shoulder, Joe’s frown deepens; Patrick’s face is hot, panicked. “I _love_ Dex, you’d be doing _me_ a favor, letting me hang out with him a little more. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Dex? You’d like Pete to come play with you tonight?”

“Yeah!” Dexter declares, one of the only words he can clearly enunciate besides ‘no,’ ‘daddy,’ ‘cookie,’ and, inexplicably, ‘Amazon’. Patrick feels very attacked.

This is utterly ridiculous. “Pete, seriously, thank you but I — I can’t let you, it wouldn’t —”

“So, I’m guessing this show starts at what? Eight? If I swing by for seven would that give you enough time?” Pete has deposited Dexter by the shaving foam and is casually thumbing through his Sidekick. “If you give me your number, I can call if anything changes.”

Patrick hesitates for a moment, just long enough to watch Dexter submerge his entire head in shaving foam.

“Seriously, I do this _all the time_ ,” Pete assures him. Patrick isn’t certain if this reassures him or makes him feel a whole lot less special but he pulls his phone out of his pocket anyway. Pete’s smile shines like summer sunlight, confident that he’s won. “Attaboy!”

“I’m only doing this because you could just, like, go and ask Vicky for my address anyway.” Patrick is lying, and he’s sure Pete knows he’s lying. He taps his number into Pete’s phone, hands over his own and watches Pete do the same. It doesn’t mean anything, couldn’t _be_ anything even if it did. “Seriously though, uh — thanks. I — I really appreciate it.”

Pete shoves his phone back into his pocket and shrugs. “I told you, I’d do anything to help out the parents here. It’s tough being a dad, right?”

“Yeah,” Patrick nods and takes back his phone, the case a little warm and damp from Pete’s fingers. “I guess so. Thanks, though. That’s really, uh, really cool of you. I — I ought to get to work… Uh, bye Dex, daddy loves you.”

*

“Why did you tell him that?” Joe asks, wiping shaving foam from Dexter’s eyes with a Batman towel.

Pete has already busied himself with the month’s progress summaries, the educational development of little Rosie Anderson contained in a neat, bordered box of his scratching scrawl. “Tell him what?”

“That you babysit for free,” Joe says, as though it should be obvious. “It’s right on the website that we charge for babysitting, he just has to _look_ and he’ll know you’re lying, dude.”

They’re interrupted; Pete by a dirty diaper — not his own, obviously — and Joe by demands for a story in the imagination corner but they reconvene by the door to the playground, their charges ranged in slouching socks and askew sun hats. Pete wipes a smear of zinc across each tiny nose as they file past him towards the sandbox.

“I guess I feel bad for him,” Pete shrugs. “It’s got to be tough, you know?”

“Hmm.” Joe doesn’t seem convinced. “Just… keep it professional, ’kay?”

*

Patrick is having a style crisis.

Actually, Patrick’s crisis is based entirely around the fact that he has no sense of style and no money with which to acquire one within the next ten minutes. All he has is a plaid shirt and jeans balanced on a knife edge between ripped enough to look like he doesn’t care in a cool way and like he doesn’t care in a hobo way. He thinks he’s sponged off most of the chocolate stains though, so he’s counting that as a win.

Dexter, fresh from his bath and smelling like June day sunshine, is trying to chew his way through the leg of the kitchen table. Patrick considers intervening but figures it’s probably good for teething. And there’s got to be fiber in there or something.

The mirror informs Patrick that no matter which way he brushes his hair, no matter if he adds some of the hair product he isn’t sure was left by Becky or a previous tenant, it’s not going to look right. He has the kind of hair that will _never_ look right, a patented Mom Haircut even though he pays a professional eight bucks to hack at it once every couple months. He jams on a trucker hat — this one cheap and tacky and emblazoned with _I [heart] Bingo_ — and figures at least this way no one can see it. With his sideburns trimmed and the fine down of stubble across his chin removed, he looks as close to presentable as he’s ever going to get.

Shoes, wallet, phone, he tightens his belt a notch then thinks better of it and loosens it once again. His guitar case is zipped and propped by the door, Pete will be here any minute, he just needs to fix Dexter some milk and then he’s good to go.

There’s a knock at the door, Pete presumably, and Patrick detours, still spraying deodorant. “Hey, man. Thanks again, I —”

Patrick stops. He’s almost certain he’s staring as Pete smiles at him from the front step. Pete; handsome and casual and not wearing his Lullabye uniform. Patrick has no idea why he imagined he would, he supposes in an off-balance way that he thinks of Pete much how he thought of his teachers in school; that they just sort of merged with the building when it closed and reappeared in the morning with the first thump of backpacks into lockers. A little like Xenomorphs but less… aggressive.

“Hey!” Pete grins, cheerful and casual and dressed in tighter-than-tight skinny jeans, a studded belt and a hoodie freed from, Patrick suspects, the girl’s side of Hot Topic. His canines are very sharp in the corners of his grin. “Can I come in?”

Again, Patrick is reminded that this is how normal people act and shuffles back, burning from his collar to the tips of his ears as he mumbles, “Sure, just — yeah. Come right on in. I was just, uh, getting Dex some milk and then…”

He pauses in the doorway of the kitchen, hands braced to the posts as he stares at his son. There’s a sick, cold feeling in the depth of his gut. Where once there was Sesame Street pajamas and the hint of powdery soft Johnson’s scent there is now a monster, a demon child, coated _entirely_ in peanut butter.

The only reason Patrick knows it’s not shit — and God only knows, it looks _exactly_ like shit — is the smell. Sweet and nutty, the jar lies open like an accusation in the middle of the faded linoleum. It’s not even the expensive organic brand with no added sugar, no palm oil, no taste. It’s Skippy. Extra smooth. Dexter grins, his teeth brilliant points of white in his otherwise nut-hued face.

“Pete!” It seems there’s a new word in his son’s vocabulary. Patrick isn’t quite in the right frame of mind to congratulate him or note it down in the baby development book.

“It’s not shit,” he says, then immediately realizes what he just said in front of a nursery worker, someone with links to child services. “Uh, poop, I meant poop! It’s not — it’s not _poop_. It’s uh, oh _fudge,_ this is — I swear he just… I only turned my back for a — a second, and now he’s…”

Defeated, Patrick reaches for his phone, already halfway through the call to the club in his head. The half-assed apologies, the reasons that sound like excuses, another venue that won’t take the time to book him again. Then there’s Pete, who’s driven from some unknown part of the city in his battered little Montero, with his bright grin no doubt hiding a special kind of judgement reserved only for the worst kind of fathers.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers at his shoes as Dexter giggles and licks peanut butter from between his toes. “I didn’t realize he’d — I’m just… I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

The hand on his shoulder sears straight through the cotton of his shirt, sparking dead-end nerves to fire up neglected neurons as Patrick leans into the touch. God, but it’s been _months_ since another adult — one that he’s not related to by blood — has touched him in any way. Pete squeezes softly, the indentations and whorls on the tips of his fingers branding permanently into the shape of Patrick’s skin.

“Just go,” Pete says, already shrugging out of his hoodie. Patrick is reminded of the first morning in the daycare. “Seriously, just get to your show. I’ll clean him up, is the bathroom just down the hall? Great, come on, Dexadoodle, let’s go see if we can find you under all of that… stuff that apparently isn’t poop.”

Dexter takes Pete’s hand without a whimper, without the protesting screams that would ricochet off the walls and make the upstairs neighbor bang on her living room floor with a broom handle if _daddy_ suggested a second bath. Patrick should cancel, he should call the club and deal with his son, his _responsibility_.

Pete turns right before they head into the bathroom, his smile soft and flooded with reassurance as he says, “Seriously, go to work. I’ve got this.”

The pipes creak underfoot and water crashes into the tub. Patrick can hear offkey singing, some nursery-bright rhyme about bath time, punctuated by Pete’s enthusiastic declaration of ‘oh my gosh, little dude, you have _rubber ducks_? That’s _so cool_!’ His fingers curl around the handle of his guitar case and he opens the door, steps out into the welcome cool of gasoline-scented evening air and makes his way to the El.

*

Patrick thinks as he plays. His fingers work the frets as easy as breathing, requiring no more concentration than the expand-and-contract of his lungs within his ribs. He plays Bowie and Coltrane, Tom Waits and whatever else he thinks the crowd might want to hear. The barstool is hard, biting bruises into the back of his thighs as he plays and sings and thinks.

He thinks a lot about Dexter, but that’s nothing new. Parenthood is a wasteland, a middle America road trip of appointments and vaccinations, necessary purchases and the constant, blood-buzzing _fear_ of a thousand different irrational _what ifs_.

He thinks a lot about Pete and that’s new and terrifying in an entirely different way. Although he doesn’t need to concern himself with Pete becoming the victim of an international child trafficking ring or that he might somehow figure out how to undo the latches on Patrick’s mom’s upstairs windows and plummet to his death, thinking about Pete _at all_ is… unsettling. Like a necktie that’s too tight, or the short, fine hairs pricking from his shirt collar after a haircut, it sets his teeth on edge and leaves him anxious.

It’s not that Pete’s said or done anything out of the ordinary. He’s treating Patrick the same way he’d treat any of the parents at Lullabye. Pete is charming, personable and Patrick’s sure that’s part of working with tiny dictators all day. But, maybe there’s something in the shape of his smile, in the way his eyes twinkle when he looks at Patrick across an alphabet print rug. Maybe there was something in the touch of his hand to Patrick’s shoulder.

_Because if it was a date, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Patrick?_

He brushes the thoughts aside and goes back to worrying about the possibility of Dex drowning in the swimming pool they don’t have but could maybe get some day. It’s not like he has the available headspace for anything else. He toasts the ripple of applause he receives with one of the several beers the bartender has pressed onto him gratis and considers what to go with next. He settles on Lullaby by Shawn Mullins.

_Everything’s gonna be alright, rockabye..._

It seems appropriate.

*

Patrick is late, the night before bleeding into the morning after as he slips his key into the lock and tiptoes inside. He’s still a little buzzed on free beer but not like, _irresponsible_ drunk. Just… just buzzed. Nicely. Warm fingers and toes and his tongue a little thicker as he glances at the kitchen clock and notes that Lullabye will open its doors in a little over seven hours.

The buzz quickly gives way to guilt.

In the living room the television flickers, shafts of light prismed across the fake hardwood floor of the hallway and the tinny resonance of the speakers turned down low. He pauses, sneakers toed off and shoved against the wall, and tries to ascertain what it is Pete’s watching.

“Patrick?” Pete calls softly from the couch, sleep-slurred and soft. Patrick tries, and fails, not to think about hearing that in other circumstances. That’s just the loneliness talking, nothing to worry about. “Is that you?”

“That or a really shitty burglar,” Patrick grins then falters, skipping heart and cotton-mouthed as he stutters, “uh, is it okay if I say ‘shitty’ when he’s, like, sleeping? Because, uh, I can _totally_ stop if —”

Patrick’s mouth has a wonderful habit of gunning ahead at full speed whilst his brain flounders desperately at the gas station of sensibility, wondering where the hell its ride just went.

Pete’s laugh is soft as he rubs at red-rimmed eyes and shakes his head. “It’s fine, dude. Don’t worry about it, you’re — you’re doing a great job, honestly, he’s a cool kid.”

Previous praise of his parenting has been delivered solely from his mom, something about hearing it from Pete makes Patrick glow a little as he nods towards the fridge. “You want a beer?” Pete shakes his head and raises a can of Red Bull in response. “Oh, right. Uh, what’re you watching? The Breakfast Club?”

Patrick calls this back over his shoulder as he heads to the fridge, extracting a juice box in the absence of anything more palatable. There’s only grape, which he hates but Dex loves. He takes a long sip and grimaces.

“Yeah,” Pete nods. “I should get going though, I’ll — I have it on tape, I’ll finish it at —”

“You can finish watching it. You know. If you want?”

The room seems to heat a little as Pete nods, smiling, shifting up on the couch to make room. Patrick tells himself it’s just the bottles of Budweiser ticking through his bloodstream, just the dry summer air outside seeping through the open window that makes him sweat a little as he lowers himself carefully into the cushions. Pete is sitting against the opposite armrest, legs spread but not overtly so. Patrick mirrors him and keeps his eyes very deliberately on the screen.

“I love this movie,” he says eventually. It sounds stupid and contrived. He thinks he sees Pete nod from the corner of his eye and wonders if he should just shut up and let him concentrate. Again, his mouth has other far more humiliating ideas and barrels straight into Het Guy Conversation Starters 101. “Ally’s smokin’ hot,” Pete’s head turns, lips quirked at the corners and stupid, shiny teeth on display, Patrick’s committed now and steams on, “So, I get we’re supposed to like, want to fuck Claire and whatever but — uh, seriously. Ally. Pre-makeover.”

“Not a Molly Ringwald fan?” Pete enquires lightly. There’s a thread to his voice that Patrick can’t quite read but he’s not going to back down now.

“Not a _Claire_ fan,” he corrects. There’s a difference. “Molly’s hot but — not Claire, you know? I guess maybe it’s because Claire is, like, all the girls in high school, right? She’s the cheerleaders and the popular girls and when she does that shitty little speech about being nothing more than her looks? Like, come on, as if being a hot chick ever held anyone back in high school. Ally’s just…”

“Attainable?” Pete’s grin is Cheshire cat wide now, smeared across his face as Patrick tips deeper into the rabbit hole.

“I — I didn’t mean it like that but, like, not for me, anyway,” Patrick sighs, unsure why he’s telling this person whose only role in his life is to care for his son that he rarely got laid in high school, “but yeah. Ally. What about you?”

He’s pretty sure, as he takes a long pull of artificial grape flavored sugar water, that this is the kind of stuff guys his age talk about with their peers. At least, the ones that don’t have preschool children to raise alone. He’s watched enough sitcoms populated with everyman guys in their early twenties to have this figured out. This is the part where Pete talks about Molly Ringwald’s tits and then maybe they high five.

Instead, Pete looks him dead in the eyes and says this: “Honestly? I’m more into John.”

Patrick chokes. On spit or juice or his own fucking _tongue,_ probably. He chokes and he wheezes, eyes streaming saltwater as he bends double and prays for the inevitability of death. Pete thumps him on the back, muttering something that sounds worried but Patrick can’t hear it over the deafening roar of blood in his ears and the tunnel-dimming hush of an impending loss of consciousness.

“Jesus Christ, _breathe_ ,” Pete urges, and if Patrick _could_ he’d point out the futility of the instruction aimed at someone who clearly _can’t fucking breathe_. Instead he wheezes, hacks and sucks down another mouthful of grape juice until the coughing stops and, eyes streaming, he gulps in a lungful of precious oxygen. “Fuck, are you okay?”

Around the blur of tears caught in his lashes, Patrick is aware that Pete’s lips are faintly chapped. He can see a small patch of shaving rash just under his jaw, angry red and sore. On the screen, Judd Nelson is delivering an impassioned speech about the state of his character’s family Christmases. Pete’s Adam’s apple bobs, frantic, and Patrick gives in to the tingle of pins and needles that crawls along his gums and the rabbiting flutter of his heart.

Pete hasn’t said it was a joke.

He closes his eyes, and — praying for reciprocation, for _something_ — he brings their mouths together. His lips slick to Pete’s, wet and warm and soft, the taste of taurine sharp and sticky-sweet. His hands are pressed to his sides, balled into fists so tight they’re close to cramping as the beer buzz works its way out of his system by the damp exchange of malt-scented spit.

Pete doesn’t move, not an inch, lips soft and unresisting but not complying, not giving back. As that sinks in, as the reality of kissing someone who isn’t kissing _him_ really takes hold, Patrick pauses, face hot and tight like sunburn as he pulls back. “I — fuck, I’m so sorry. I thought —”

Pete devours him, any further apology stolen from his lips, tongue, lungs by the taste of Red Bull and masculinity. Patrick gasps, surprised, mouth slipping open as Pete’s tongue skates along his lower lip, hands sinking into the mess of his hair and knocking his cap to the back of his head. There’s a thick pulse of need and want throbbing under Patrick’s skin, too-long-lonely exchanged for the press of his fingers through over-producted, over-ironed hair. He yanks, too hard, too eager but Pete groans like he loves it, baring his throat with stubble and shaving rash to the press of Patrick’s lips, the flat of his tongue.

Pete’s pulse is like an earthquake under Patrick’s mouth, shuddering up through the Richter scale, this encounter measurable as a national disaster. Then, oh fuck, Pete climbs into his lap, sucking the tag of Patrick’s earlobe, biting along his jaw, his vocal cords rumbling as he whispers a warning, “Don’t — don’t mark me up, yeah? I — for work, you know?”

Patrick nods, he’d agree to anything right now, his dick throbbing sore in the confines of his jeans. The collar of his shirt is snagged under clever fingertips, eased down to reveal his collar bone to the talented quest of Pete’s glorious, gluttoning mouth. Pete’s lips find the tender spot where his heart beat throbs, biting kisses that spark shockwaves directly to his cock. Hands wrapped around the skinny stretch of Pete’s hips, he pulls him down as he strains up, cock to cock through zippers and denim.

There’s an arm around his shoulders, strong, hard, masculine, a hand trailing through the hair at his nape as the other plucks idly at his nipple through the dual layers of shirt and button down. It’s intense, each pinch echoed through the twitch of his hips on a nerve fired straight to the head of his dick. God, oh _God_ , but he hasn’t been touched, hasn’t been _wanted_ , in so long. Too long. When was the last time? He can’t think beyond the way the carpet feels under his heels, the way the weight of Pete pushes down into his lap, the way he tastes of _dude_ , smearing-sticky across Patrick’s mouth.

Heat coils low in his belly, snaking out across his groin and up into his ribs, the unfamiliar sensation of getting off without a spit-slick right hand and porn watched guiltily on his laptop. Patrick is already embarrassingly close and getting closer with each roll of hips to hips. Fuck, Pete’s _mouth_ , the way he sucks on Patrick’s tongue, digs the weight of his fingernails into skin and groans, hot and sticky, over Patrick’s lips.

“Can I?” Pete’s mumbling, hand sliding lower, across the soft swell of Patrick’s stomach, “Fuck, can I?”

Pete’s fingers brush the cheap steel buckle of Patrick’s belt. This is the moment he should back out, the moment Pete’s fingers splay around the shape of Patrick’s cock through the denim. Pete grins, teeth sharpdangerous in the dim light of the TV screen, he _grins_ and he _squeezes_ and Patrick’s world unravels.

He comes, arching up, nails sinking into the warm silk stretch of Pete’s hips as he cries out, underwear coated wethotsticky. He twists, arching up, rutting frantic into the bracket of Pete’s hips as he desperately tries to draw it out, to make it a little less blink-and-miss. Each beat of his pulse finds a route to his cock and back again until he’s shuddering, sweat-damp and breathless, face pressed to Pete’s shoulder.

His glasses are askew, biting painfully into his temple and cutting a crease across the bridge of his nose. It makes everything out of focus as he blinks, breathing rough, and sees Dexter’s toy chest tucked down by the TV. He feels wrong, deconstructed, delineated and put back together out of sequence, his skin too tight from too much beer and not enough sleep. Guilt shades him dizzy, makes his head throb sharp around the temples and his tongue too thick for his mouth.

Dexter.

Cotton sticks to his cock, warm and uncomfortable, his jeans damp like some horny highschooler faced with his first set of tits. His ardour is cooling as fast as the come slicked to his thighs, the reality crushing the edges of the fantasy as he sits still and concentrates hard on breathing without taking in the smell of Pete’s cologne.

Pete’s cock is still hard, Patrick can feel the heat, the insistent hardness of it, encroaching through denim as Pete sucks on his neck. “Did you…?” he’s laughing that ugly laugh, but not unkindly, “Shit, I almost never have that effect on guys. Fuck, I want you to —”

“You need to leave,” Patrick mutters, his gaze roaming everything in the room but Pete.

Pete laughs — like he thinks Patrick’s kidding, his hand sliding to the bulge in his pants — and murmurs, “Yeah, right.” Patrick’s fist closes around his wrist, pinning it to the armrest, because if Pete unfastens those jeans, if he gets his cock out, then Patrick’s going to do something he can’t come back from. (Patrick has already done _so much_ he can’t come back from.) “Wait, are you, like — are you _serious_?”

“I can’t,” Patrick whispers, throat raw from the scrape of threatening tears. “I shouldn’t have — and I can’t, I just — I fucking _can’t_ , man. I — she said she’d… I’m _sorry_ , okay? I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

The numbers on the VCR blur over Pete’s shoulder. Pete’s fingertips are sharp against Patrick’s shoulders, his voice a concerned hum that sounds too far away. Big boys don’t cry, but no one said anything about terrified single fathers so Patrick caves, lets the tears bubble over as he chokes on shuddering sobs.

Pete slithers out of his lap, exposing the damning evidence of his inability to control both himself and his cock, irrefutable corroboration that Becky was right. He doubles over, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, hiding the shame of the damp patch as Pete sits, quiet and confused. When it passes, when he gets it under control, Pete leans in, their foreheads very close. Patrick wants to jerk away but doesn’t.

“Hey,” Pete says softly, “are you okay? Do you, uh... do you want to talk about it?”

Patrick shakes his head, hair caught sticky between his fingers. “No.”

“Okay. But, like — you know this stays between us, right? I’m not gonna tell anyone?” Pete looks as though he might reach out to touch him and Patrick shies away, curling back into the couch. Pete stops, hand outstretched, painted with the kind of hurt that makes Patrick want to gut himself with the sharp edges of his guilt. He pulls his hand back into his lap and continues quietly. “I’m sorry. I — I misread the signals. Please — please don’t cry. This doesn’t have to affect Dex, you know? I’d, uh — I’d really like it if he kept coming to Lullabye.”

Patrick shakes his head, bewildered, “I — I wasn’t gonna… He likes it there, I’m a — a _good_ dad, I _wouldn’t —_ ”

“Okay, okay,” Pete soothes, shrugging on his hoodie. He climbs to his feet and Patrick wants to beg him to stay, to curl around him and never let go. No one has made him feel like this before. Like he’s wanted. Like he matters. He doesn’t, though. Just pulls his knees to his chest and watches the way the cars passing outside slant light across the living room floor.

Pete pauses in the doorway and mutters, “I — listen,” Patrick cocks his head to show that he is, “I’d like it if we could be friends. I like you, Patrick, I don’t — I don’t want you to hate me.”

Patrick can’t think right now, his brain buzzing out of his skull, his skin too small and his pulse throbbing thick and messy, “Right. Yeah — I — I’ll text you. Maybe. Uh, thanks for — for watching him.”

Dirty. That’s how he feels, the itch of it crawling over his skin in the shape of Becky’s eyes. She’s smiling at him from a photo on the dresser, the one he keeps up for Dexter’s sake. He wants to smash it to pieces, to grind it to dust under his heels until they’re shredded raw and bloodied by broken glass.

“Any time,” Pete says, and he sounds like he means it. “I swear this won’t be awkward tomorrow. Just — get some rest, yeah? I — I think you need it.”

The door clicks closed behind him, the asthmatic wheeze of the Montero’s engine preceding the flicker of the headlights kaleidoscoping across Patrick’s living room. Patrick curls on his side on the couch, knees drawn up like he can make himself small enough to simply disappear.

If it wasn’t for Dexter, maybe he would.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Next week, I promise a little more light will be shed on Patrick's situation with his ex.
> 
> If you had the time, comments are lovely and kudos are awesome.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Falling in love or falling in friendship. Patrick's not sure which is which.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, another beautiful sunny Sunday, another glimpse into the life of single parenthood. Thank you all so much for your lovely words on this AU, it's been so encouraging to hear them :)
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/42958717965/in/dateposted/)

First quarter at college, Patrick met a guy at a party. It was one of _those_ parties; warm alcohol in solo cups and a band that hit the right note maybe one time in five. It was college, summed up in a house trashed by kids trying to work out what being an adult actually meant.

Patrick was drunk when he kissed him, the taste of orange juice and vodka sticky sweet on his tongue. He was significantly less drunk, but still a little buzzed, when he guided the guy to his dorm room and fucked him on a twin bed under a framed Batman poster.

In the morning the guy told him his name; Will. They ate breakfast together, then lunch and then it sort of made sense to grab dinner, too. They stole kisses between classes, sticky hand jobs in college bathrooms and blow jobs exchanged like promise rings.

By Christmas break, Patrick told Will he loved him and Will said it back. His mouth tasted of eggnog and the stupid Santa Claus candy Patrick bought him.

They drove out to Will’s dad’s place in California for spring break, across the dead-end towns and ghost stories of the Midwest, keying in zip codes to a GPS that told them to point the nose of the car at the horizon and keep going until the blue of the sky met the blue of the Pacific. They fucked in motels and truck stops and, one night, in the twisted maze of a cornfield, watched by the stars.

Close to something, though he didn’t know what, Patrick stood on a beach in California and made a throwaway comment about girls with summer hair and sand on their skin. It didn’t mean anything, it’s not like he was _looking_ , he made the observation thinking Will wouldn’t care.

But Will did. He made the kind of comments that Patrick didn’t really understand, comments about cravings and desires like Patrick’s sexuality was nothing more than a whimsical wish for a different flavor pudding cup after dinner. He spoke words like barbs about sexual greed and infidelity, holding Patrick’s surfside comments aloft like a victory flag.

Will, in one afternoon, made Patrick ashamed to call himself bisexual.

The drive back was quiet, no longer hung with declarations whispered soft into damp skin.

The drive back was awkward, with luggage carefully separated out in the back of the hatchback Will borrowed from his mom.

The drive back was when Patrick realized this: he would never fit the box ascribed to him. Too straight to be gay, too gay to be straight. It would be better, he realized, not to speak of it again. He watched the landscape grow darker as they crossed state lines and wished away the miles with the hum of the tires beneath them.

When Patrick met Becky (a junior to his sophomore, sophisticated, beautiful) he knew better, he was jaded. So, Patrick never spoke of his sexuality and Becky never asked because why would she? Her boyfriend would kiss, touch, fuck her, there was nothing to question. He picked a side but didn’t feel any better for it.

Patrick kissed, touched, fucked and didn’t worry too much about condoms because she was on birth control. Sure, they argued, on-again-off-again, more off than on. When Becky announced she was pregnant after four months, panicked and sobbing, Patrick held her and took responsibility.

There was no question in Patrick’s mind when she said she was keeping the baby. He adapted, setting up a meeting with his professor to discuss withdrawing once the baby arrived. His professor protested. His mother protested. His father, aunts, uncles, siblings and probably his high school music teacher if he found out all protested. But Patrick was resolved.

He’d go back, he told himself, that was the plan. Becky would finish first, get a job, then Patrick would go back and complete his degree. It made sense.

Dexter arrived just in time for Halloween pumpkins and kids begging candy door-to-door. They had an apartment, small and cheap, in an area no one really thought of as fashionable. It had decent schools though, good commuting links and a playpark nearby. Patrick withdrew from college.

(It made _sense_.)

Then, Becky withdrew from Patrick.

At first, he told himself it was normal, hormonal, natural. But Patrick was lonely and Becky slowly seemed to forget about the boyfriend and son waiting patiently for her to finish another social gathering, allegedly integral for securing a job at the end of school. If Patrick wondered why so many of these gatherings ended with her slurring and scented with booze and strange cologne, he didn’t say anything. He concentrated on Dexter and working his part time job at the sports store.

But Patrick was only twenty-one, his body still aching for touch that Becky was no longer willing to give. He didn’t, wouldn’t, make demands. But he did download videos. Oral was his favorite, watching some guy on his knees sucking dick, Patrick’s hand frantic around the jealous hardness of his own cock in the dark. He’d think of Will and cornfields and then he’d come, sticky with sweat and itchy with guilt, the laptop tucked away until next time.

Until the next time became the time Becky caught him.

She screamed and he begged. She made accusations of depravity, of perversion, like she was the minister at bible camp and set to convert him onto the right path with nothing more than the burning heat of his own self-loathing. Patrick’s pleading wasn’t enough, a bag packed but not with diapers, her car roaring away to her mom’s house in Milwaukee but not before she levelled a final warning.

“You’re disgusting. If I _ever_ find out you’ve been near a guy, I swear to God, Patrick, I’ll take Dexter. I’ll take him and you’ll never fucking see him again.”

*

Patrick does the reasonable, normal thing that any rational, functioning adult would do after blowing in his pants and then bawling his eyes out in front of his son’s unfairly attractive daycare teacher. He loiters, embarrassed and small, behind the wall next to the daycare center, breathing shallowly through his nose and convincing himself that Dexter _probably_ has a fever.

“Are you sick, little dude,” Patrick asks like Dex can answer. From his stroller, cheeks irritatingly unflushed and the poster child for toddler well-being, Dexter scowls at him. This is not a sick child but Patrick isn’t above bribery. “Should daddy take you home? Get you some chocolate milk?” Dexter shakes his head and Patrick slides the ace from his sleeve. “I’ll let you watch Curious George _all day_.”

Dexter bares his teeth and growls, “No. Pete!”

If that fucking asshole monkey can’t persuade him, Patrick needs to accept his fate. Inside, it’s the usual levels of morning madness and he wonders, refusing to acknowledge the Montero he saw in the staff parking lot, if maybe Pete called in sick. If maybe he can hand Dex over to Joe and make it out with his heart, and dignity, mostly intact.

Patrick isn’t that lucky.

“Pete!” Dexter squeals, hurling himself from Patrick’s arms and scaling his newfound conspirator and partner in crime like a jungle gym.

Pete’s smile for Dexter is the sparkle of the lake in high summer, the way the breeze comes through the trees in the park and lifts the wisped edges of Dexter’s shaggy hair. His smile for Patrick is small, professional, bordered with apologies Pete doesn’t actually owe and Patrick sure as hell doesn’t deserve. He hands over the diaper bag in silence.

“How is he?” Pete asks, _how are you_ implicit in his tone.

“Oh, you know. He’s fine,” Patrick says, when he means _I’m so fucking sorry._

Pete has seen, made, Patrick come. He’s tasted the inside of Patrick’s mouth and tested his tongue against the way his teeth set in his jaw. Pete’s hands know the shape of his cock through denim. He’s heard the way Patrick cries out, the way he locks up tight as the world crashes down. Patrick burns with embarrassment.

Their interactions are claustrophobic, reduced to a daycare classroom and Patrick’s preowned couch. There’s not enough oxygen in either of those settings, too little air to sustain whatever this might be, could have been, will never be. Patrick scuffs his toe against the floor and leans in to brush a kiss to Dexter’s forehead, eyes closed as he takes in the smell of Pete’s cologne and tries... tries...

“Are you doing anything at the weekend?” Pete asks, looking at Dexter but speaking to Patrick.

Patrick pauses. Dex is with Becky, he has no plans beyond binge watching old episodes of Buffy and ordering pizza. He suspects that this isn’t something he should admit and probably signifies why he doesn’t have more (read: any) friends. However, Patrick can’t think of a single reason why this is any of Pete’s business.

So, he draws himself up to his not-impressive full height and says, “Oh, a few options but — like, nothing concrete, you know? Keeping myself available.”

God, he sounds like a fucking douchebag. This is why no one wants to hang out with him. Pete smiles as he deposits Dexter with Joe and runs his fingertips casually over the quart bottles of poster paint above the sinks.

“Joe and I are having some of the guys over on Saturday. Nothing big, just pizza, horrible beer, it’s usually fun.” Patrick has no idea why Pete is telling _him_ this. “Do you… want to join us, maybe?”

Honestly, that’s not where Patrick saw this going. He falters, hands in his pockets, awkward and unsure. Joe is staring at them from over by the snack table, curious.

“Oh, that’s — that’s really nice of you,” he stammers, flushing that same gorgeous shade of red he seems to reserve especially for Pete. “But I don’t want to intrude.”

“No intrusion, it’d be awesome if you could make it,” Pete tugs down the paint bottle and moves to the craft table. Patrick is sure his ribs will crack under the pressure of his galloping heart. “Tell you what, text me if you change your mind, I’ll send you my address.”

Patrick realizes he’s being given an out and fumbles to comply. “Yeah, sure. I — thanks? I — I will. Think about it. Have a great day, Dex. Daddy loves you.”

He hurries from the room without looking back.  

*

“I’m not going to ask,” Joe says, holding up a hand when Pete begins to speak. “No, seriously, _do not_ tell me. Because once you’ve said it out loud, I’m implicated. When Vicky asks me about this, I need to play dumb for real, you _know_ I’m the _worst_ liar.”

Pete straightens a skirt, tugs up some socks and begins pouring paint into trays. “He’s just… lonely. I told you, I feel bad for him. I think he could use a friend.”

“For the record,” Joe says, annoyed. There are probably other things he wants to say but little pitchers have big ears. “I think this is a horrible idea.”

Pete smiles his million-dollar smile. “Duly noted.”

*

It’s eight in the evening, the sun dipping low in the sky and setting the stage for the swollen round of a hunter’s moon. Patrick is not in his apartment (that he tells himself is in Logan Square but is actually in Hermosa). Instead, Patrick stands in a convenience store (that _is_ in Logan Square) and considers the many poor prior decisions that have led him to this moment.

Listen, it’s not like Patrick has any better options, okay? He’s tired of being lonely, tired of only talking to Dexter, or Andy, or douchebags buying running shoes and asking questions they know he won’t know the answers too, just to watch him fumble and blush. He’s just _so_ goddamn tired of hearing the same sunshine yellow voices sing-songing from the TV, of the way his mom always sounds like she’s frightened he’ll break if she presses too hard about the details of his week.

Patrick wants, just once, to be twenty-two in the way people are _supposed_ to be twenty-two. Carefree and happy and, _yes_ , full of cheap beer and bad decisions. If Pete made the offer out of pity then Patrick will take it. He eyes the shelves in the 7-Eleven and considers his options. Pabst is cheap which means he can take more units, but it’s also _Pabst_ and he’s not sure if it’s come around to cool in an ironic hipster way just yet. He grabs a crate of Miller Lite and heads for the checkout.

The girl behind the counter is pretty, perky in a way that reminds him of Becky, blonde hair cut into a thick, blunt-edged bob and green eyes framed with too much eyeliner. She asks for ID and pretends to scrutinize it, takes the crumpled fives and singles he pushes across the counter and shoves them into the register. His change is delivered in the form of coins that feel sweaty, smell coppery. He tries not to think about how much of the week’s food budget he just blew on beer.

It’s hot out, Chicago hot, the kind of Midwest burn that slicks his skin with sweat and leaves him half-melted and puddling on the sidewalk. It’s kind of too far to walk but not close enough that he can afford a cab, so he waits for the El, the bright blue paint over the braille-bump edge of the platform vaguely reminiscent of treading on Duplo blocks.

He minds the gap and boards the train, a couple hops along the line then down the steps and blinking onto the sidewalk. The directions he printed from the internet are already curling at the edges, wilting damp from being shoved into the sweaty depth of his hip pocket. They tell him Pete’s place is barely two blocks away. He finds it easily and pauses, nervous, by the intercom. The last, only, time he saw Pete outside of a childcare setting, Patrick was sitting in a puddle of his own come and crying on his couch. What the fuck is he _doing_? Maybe he should just —

“Patrick?” His head snaps up so fast his neck burns with it, liquid agony pooling in the base of his jaw and under his tongue. Pete is hanging from a third storey window like he doesn’t understand the consequences of gravity, waving as though Patrick could possibly miss him. He’s wearing a tight black t-shirt with some kind of glitter-sparkle design that looks like it’s definitely going to flake away, clinging to the sweaty skin of whichever guy might be lucky enough to press up close to him. “Come on up, dude! I’m buzzing you in!”

Pete meets him on the stairs with the kind of smile that makes Patrick’s stomach flip, relieving him of the beer and rambling a mile a minute about everything and nothing. Patrick has no hope of keeping up so he nods and smiles and hopes Pete can’t see that his actual forearms are sweating. The beer was already kind of ambient when he picked it up, it’ll be warm now, sticky-gross and unpleasant.

Inside and Patrick seriously considers bolting. It’s not like he knows these people, not like he needs to see any of them again. He can find a new daycare center by Monday, hell, he can be in a new _state_ by Monday. Which one specifically doesn’t matter, so long as it’s many, many miles from Pete’s achingly cool apartment with its bare-brick walls and exposed pipework and his gorgeous, fashionable friends.

Patrick hears good things about Delaware.

“This is Gabe,” Pete begins, snagging the back of a bright purple hoodie. Gabe turns around, all high cheekbones and dangerous grin. Patrick feels like a videogame ogre, only shorter, with his sideburns and soft stomach tugging his polo shirt tight. “And that’s Disashi, Ryland, Travie, Mikey, uh, you know Joe.” Why does Pete only befriend statuesque fucking _models_? “We’re gonna watch the game. Do you — is that okay? You like basketball, right?”

“Right,” Patrick nods. “Who doesn’t?” Patrick. Patrick doesn’t.

Pete decants the beers into the fridge right alongside the designer IPAs and ales from small, independent breweries. The cheap blue and silver cans look out of place next to artisan glass bottles with fancy labels on the kind of spiritual level that Patrick relates to. Patrick wants to curl up in a ball or run to his mom or just fucking _die_.

Instead, Pete presses a beer into his hand and makes a vague promise of impending pizza. Everyone is sprawled in the living room, talking, laughing, joking, but Patrick hugs to Pete’s side like a clingy girlfriend. This is why he doesn’t socialize.

Bravely, or at least he tells himself it’s brave, he steps away from Pete and sinks down onto the couch, engaging the nearest guy with the only shared topic of conversation they have.

“So, how do you know Pete?” he asks Mikey with his stupid hipster glasses and thighs too skinny for skinny jeans.

“We used to date,” Mikey informs him and, oh, okay. That’s fine. That’s not intimidating _at all_. Patrick subtly sucks in his stomach and straightens his shoulders a little. It makes no difference, he still feels like a miniature gargoyle next to Pete’s unfeasibly long-legged, improbably pretty  _ex-boyfriend_. “Yeah, it was fun for a while, but you know when you look at someone and realize that you’re basically just with them because you like fucking them?”

This is not something Patrick wants to hear. Look, he’s not naive, not some innocent, wide-eyed kid desperate to be Pete’s first. He can’t be with Pete _at all_ so the point is entirely and totally moot. Still, there’s a twist of something bitter and ugly in his gut as he draws unfavorable comparisons. Beer sipped, a miserable distraction, he tries to think of something to say.

“Liar,” Pete calls from the kitchen, sparing them both, “We broke up because you’re a fucking bitch, Mikes.” Mikey flips him off, good-natured and smiling. It’s all so very grown up and healthy.

“I mean, I guess it’s good you stayed friends?” says Patrick, unfamiliar with the concept though he swears it’s not his fault. “I — my ex and I didn’t, it’s — it kinda sucks, you know?”

“Oh, we’re just the _best_ of friends, aren’t we, Peter?” Mikey sing-songs as Pete drops a stack of pizza boxes onto the coffee table. Patrick’s nose twitches, stomach rumbling at the smell of melted cheese and the promise of processed carbohydrates. “Besides, Pete’s got the biggest, most _amazing_ —”

“ _Thank you_ , Michael.”

“— vinyl collection. Only an _idiot_ would cut himself off from something like that.” Mikey raises an eyebrow lazily and helps himself to a slice. “Aw, did you think I was talking about your dick? _Big_? _Amazing_? You heard of modesty? Think you might like to try it out sometime?”

“I — I didn’t know you collect vinyl,” Patrick stammers, trying not to think about Pete and Mikey together, about the fact that Mikey is intimately acquainted with Pete’s cock. They must’ve looked good together, holy shit, he can concede that, Mikey so tall and willowy — like Will, don’t think it, _don’t think it_ — Pete so tan and dark with all of that ink…

Wait, is he, like, _jealous_ or something?

“And _I_ didn’t know _he_ was into short guys,” Mikey eyes Patrick with that special kind of speculation reserved by an ex that isn’t interested but doesn’t like losing old ground. “With hats.”

Patrick tugs at his trucker hat self-consciously, skin heating across his cheekbones as he huddles a little further into the cushions. There’s nothing wrong with a well-chosen hat, goddammit. The first part of Mikey’s comment sinks in. “Oh! No! We’re not — Pete and I aren’t — I’m just… just…” What _is_ he exactly? An acquaintance? Someone Pete feels sorry enough for to drag him along to a social gathering like a care in the community project? “I’m…”

“He’s a friend,” Pete interrupts firmly, tab popped on a can of beer. Patrick beams and pretends not to watch the way Pete’s throat contracts as he swallows deeply. “His kid goes to Lullabye and we got talking.”

“You have a _kid_?” Gabe chips in, eyeing Patrick with disbelief he could at least be polite enough to _try_ to hide. He says it loud enough that suddenly everyone is paying attention. Despite spending time on stage in front of drunk strangers, Patrick hates being stared at. “Shit, you’re like, _twelve_.”

“Twenty-two,” he mutters at the Metallica poster on the wall. “I — I was pretty young when he was born and… Look, it’s not that interesting, seriously.”

The impossibly tall dude with his thick, afro hair drawn back in a bun considers Patrick through narrowed eyes. If _this_ guy has fucked Pete, too, Patrick is going home. “Wait… Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“I don’t think so.” Patrick is almost certain that this gorgeous man — Travie? — has literally _no_ reason to have ever noticed him _anywhere_. He glances down at Travie’s shoes and sees the kind of expensive Nikes that they stock at XO. “I — uh, I work in a sports store. Maybe —”

“Hold up, you’ve played at Charlie’s, right?” Patrick nods and Travie becomes hopelessly animated. “Dude! That fucking Michael Jackson medley you do is _killer_ , what the fuck, man? How’s a tubby little white boy like you sing like that, anyway? I told Pete, didn’t I tell you, man?” Pete nods his agreement and grins. Patrick thinks his face may be about to explode from the raging heat of his blush. Also, seriously, _tubby_? Winnie the fucking _Pooh_ is tubby — it’s right there in the song — grown men do not get to call other grown men by the same verbs reserved for anthropomorphic teddy bears. “You’re fucking _incredible_ , man. You should be, like, making your own records, not singing covers in shitty bars.”

That, Patrick will admit, makes up for it a little. But he has no real answer beyond a modest kind of shrug as he leans forward and hides the itching sense of exposure by reaching for a slice of veggie deluxe. Joe joins in now, making noises about fetching his guitar. Patrick’s lungs feel too small, his skin too tight as he shakes his head quickly and hisses excuses about a sore throat. Really, it’s just because the only song he can remember in the history of all songs ever recorded is, for some reason, Wonderwall. And he refuses to be _that_ douchebag.

“Alright, break it up,” Pete rides to his rescue; an unlikely knight in his too-tight t-shirt that, Patrick can see now, reads _I liked N*Sync when they were underground._ “At least let the kid get his feet under the table before you devour him, fucking _animals_.”

“Nice pizza,” he mutters quietly, breathing easy for the first time since he arrived as Pete drops down next to him and grabs his own slice “Really good.”

“Are we watching this or not?” Pete asks, cranking the volume until Patrick’s ears hurt with it. He thinks of his own neighbours who lodge noise complaints if Dexter speaks above a whisper anytime between 8pm and 8am. He thinks of Dexter and feels a pang that aches like homesickness. It’s been _five months_ , he should be used to losing him every other weekend by now.

He thinks of Pete and the way he smiles when he thinks Patrick’s not looking.

It doesn’t _matter_ , not in any real, tangible way. He can’t grab this, can’t take it, can’t hold down the ephemeral and make it real, snatching dreams like butterflies and pinning them into chronological photograph albums in the places he doesn’t share with anyone else. One for Will; one for Becky; one for Pete.

If Patrick should feel embarrassed about a fumble on a couch in an apartment that seems continents away, he’s refusing to comply. If he should blush at the way Pete touches his arm as they talk, the way their thighs brush against the printed fabric of the couch, he’s not. Maybe, he thinks, drunk on too much good beer, intoxicated on the curve of Pete’s smile, _maybe_ it’s because he knows it can never be anything more.

“I’m glad you came,” Pete mutters into his ear. It makes Patrick jump and scrape the peak of his hat across Pete’s lips. They laugh and Patrick bursts warm, the explosion of summer day fire hydrants through his chest as he brings the weight of their shoulders together. Pete pushes back into him. Patrick could get used to this.

“I’m glad, too.”

*

“I should get going.”

Patrick’s been saying it for an hour, repeating it at well-timed intervals like some kind of mantra, counting it off like prayers on a rosary. Someone always objects, hands him another beer, demands another song.

(Joe won out, but only on the proviso that he plays while Patrick sings. He doesn’t feel quite right, puzzle pieces misaligned and the picture doesn’t match up, shaking fingers too uncertain to press into the frets. But he still sings, the shake to his voice lending something pretty to Costello and Nat King Cole. Pete smiles, smiles, smiles in the corner of his eye, lurking like sunspots in Patrick’s peripheral vision until he’s dizzy. Is he drunk on the booze or the way Pete’s dimples pinch in at the balls of his cheeks?)

So, Patrick’s been trying to leave but the crew, the boys, the fucking _gang_ , have been stopping him each time. But now Joe is passed out on the couch under Gabe, Ryland is dozing against the coffee table, Disashi and Travie left fifteen minutes ago and even Mikey is shrugging on his jacket. Patrick says it again, warm and tucked into Pete’s side. “I should really get going.”

“You could stay?” Pete offers, palms showing like Patrick is a horse about to spook. “Not like _that_ , but... you could take Joe’s bed?”

It’s tempting, Patrick tells him so. “Tempting. But I have, like, chores to do and stuff before Dex gets back tomorrow. Thanks, though.”

Patrick shrugs on his jacket and retrieves his keys from the counter, leaves the beers that no one has touched and heads for the door.

Pete follows him. A ghost, haunting the parts of Patrick that stand like ruins, he stands perfectly appointed in his girl’s hoodie and grins, crooked around the edges. (Or maybe that’s just the alcohol in Patrick’s system.) “I’ll walk you part way home.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Patrick objects without _really_ objecting. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Pete replies. He doesn’t offer justification and Patrick doesn’t ask.

They walk in silence, shoes thudding echoes into the apartment building hallway as they descend the steps and burst out onto the street. Tonight, it feels as though Chicago belongs to them, each high-rise and windowpane, the way the streetlights flood the world flourescent and bleed the stars from the sky. They still have the moon though, over-ripe and bursting, it hangs in a sticky sky that wraps them in heat and _this_. This silence.

Pete kicks a soda can against the wall, the rattle of it deafening even under the groan of sporadic freeway traffic. Patrick’s watch says it’s close to two in the morning and he feels alive with it, buzzing, vibrating through his bones and down into his fingertips. Pete’s shoulder bumps his, their hands shoved into pockets as they concentrate on their shoes. What the fuck is this?

“Should we talk about what happened?” Pete asks, grounding Patrick, anchoring him. He sways to the left and into a parking meter, the solid weight of it slamming bruises into his arm, hip, shin.

He hisses, “Mother _fucker_!” then breathes out, “If you want to.”

Pete considers the sky, what they can see of it framed by the way the buildings rise around them. It’s like looking through the wrong end of a viewfinder, staring back at themselves walking suburban streets washed with midnight. Pete’s voice is quiet as he says, “I’m not going to push you for anything, you know? But I — I like you.”

(For those paying rapt attention, this is where Patrick makes his second mistake, if the first was pressing his lips to the shape of Pete’s grin on a couch lit by John Hughes.)

“I like you, too,” Patrick whispers, means it, too. But Patrick means like this; dudes being bros, friends-not-lovers because Patrick — even drunk, like this — is pragmatic and his world hinges on Dexter. Pete smiles and nudges their shoulders together for a second time. “You’re like — the most awesome guy I think I’ve ever met.”

“Maybe…” Pete starts, pauses like the words are all twisted up on his tongue. In the orange-glow light of the streetlights, Patrick imagines Pete could kiss him. Not someone else, not some pretty Mikey with his long legs and ribs making framework under milk-pale skin. Someone else doesn’t get to kiss Pete tonight, but Patrick _could_. Is that significant? Pete shakes his head around a throatful of gravel that should be a laugh. “You’re something else, Stump.”

Bump go their shoulders. Three times lucky. They’re on Diversey now, heading down to Kelvyn Park, Patrick lets his feet slow and waits for a goodbye. Is it appropriate to high five? As he’s wavering, caught in social indecision, Pete grabs him, drags him, hauls him close. They’re crushed, chest, hip, thigh, Pete’s arms around his neck, his own around Pete’s waist. Every inch of Pete is molten, dripping sticky-hot through Patrick’s clothes until he’s sure they’ll fuse together. Time beats on in this endless press of bodies until Patrick’s not sure if the world has stopped turning, if Chicago’s standing still and it’s just the moon that shifts above them.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “For tonight,” he says, when he means _for everything_.

Pete’s skin smells of salt, of fabric softener that isn’t like Patrick’s and cologne he’s sure he’s smelled clinging noxious to passing teenagers at the mall. It smells good on Pete, though. Patrick breathes it in and lets it replace the oxygen in his system, holding on to the way Pete’s spine curves under his hands. Touch starved and aching, he toys with the ‘what if’ of inviting Pete back to his place, of secrets kept in hidden places.

“We’ll do it again,” Pete murmurs, makes it sound like a promise, “whenever you like. Text me?”

This is Patrick’s cue, untangling although it aches. There’s something cosmic about this, some missed connection in the past that should have happened but didn’t. It rings with fate.

“Yeah,” he nods, his arms prickle with goosebumps despite the sticky warmth. “’Night.”

“Sleep tight,” says Pete, smiling. “Sweet dreams.”

There’s only one set of footsteps as Patrick sets off towards his apartment. Just the thump of his own sneakers against the asphalt without the accompanying echo of Pete’s heading in the opposite direction. Patrick shoves his hands down into his pockets and keeps his eyes on the end of the block up ahead. This could be more, _they_ could be more. It won’t, can’t be, but he’s almost okay with that. They can be friends.

When he gets to the corner and jaywalks on the red light, he glances back the way he just came. Pete is still there, smiling, silhouetted under a stop sign. Even Patrick can make out the metaphor.

That night, Patrick dreams the shape of Pete’s smile, gilded-gold with the shade of his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awww! I just love them so much! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are, as always, absolutely appreciated.
> 
> Or, if you'd prefer, you could drop by Tumblr and let me know what you think @sn1tchesandtalkers
> 
> See you next time?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was the Fourth of July...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned that I love you guys? Seriously, it's so nice to hear what you think, see the comments and kudos and the little notes on Tumblr. You guys are making me warm and fuzzy each and every week, you're all awesome and lovely and fabulous :D
> 
> Anyway, you didn't come here to listen to me. On with the Peterick...
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/43948405232/in/dateposted/)

Patrick’s had friends before.

No, really, he has. He could probably name a couple dozen if anyone sat him down with a pen and paper and asked him to jot a list. There were kids at school that he liked plenty and guys he hung out with in college before the world narrowed to baby sensory and diapers and hoping there was enough money in the account to pay for formula. There are guys from XO’s he’s hung out with sometimes, heading from work to a bar on one of the two nights in fourteen that Becky has Dexter.

They’ve drifted away, though. It’s too hard to maintain the interest of others when the person that needs him the most literally shits his pants on a daily basis.

But, like, _yeah_ Patrick’s had friends. Guys and girls he could text to hang out or go to a movie or spend days out by the lake sinking beers acquired with fake IDs and charming smiles.

Patrick’s never had a _best_ friend before, though. He’s never known what it is to finish someone’s sentences, to share a conversation in a glance or have someone show up with a tacky trucker hat from Walmart that they picked up because they _knew_ he’d love it.

(He _does_ love it, by the way, it’s brown, emblazoned with ‘Vinyl Nerd’. Pete says it’s funny because it’s true. Patrick figures he’ll stop wearing it daily at some point but like, that point is not now.)

So, Patrick has a friend, a _best_ friend and he’s stupid-fucking-giddy on it. He’s a hyperactive ten-year-old bouncing into Pete’s inbox too often with not enough time in between, snorting in the lunchroom at dumb jokes, at sweet little observations about Dexter. Patrick sees the future in the shape of the three of them, their own little unit of dudes against the world. Then Patrick remembers the reality of it and crushes that down.

Pete’s a fixture in his apartment though, his brightly colored Bapes mixing with the shape of Dexter and Patrick’s sneakers on the rack, his hoodies standing out like exclamation points next to Patrick’s denim-and-dark on the hook by the door.

Pete also has this dog. This ludicrously sized American bulldog who, ostensibly, is named Hemingway. This is debatable as Patrick has never heard him referred to as anything but ‘ _Hemmy_!’ This is bellowed, without fail, loudly enough for Patrick to assume the exclamation point is part of his moniker. Dexter loves Hemmy with the kind of fierceness reserved for firstborn children. Hemmy appears to adore Dexter with similar levels of devotion. Patrick wishes he had the time, space or energy for a dog of their own, but Hemmy is a good substitute.

Pete is a constant, becomes the north star in Patrick’s sky by which he can navigate safely. He feels like home. Patrick is scared shitless of that, white-knuckle, roller coaster panic racing through his veins when he thinks about it.

Mostly, he doesn’t think about it.

Since Pete is always there it’s inevitable he meets Patrick’s mom, meets his sister and, eventually, meets Becky. It happens one Friday night in June, Dexter’s bag packed by the door and that cold, hard dread seeping where Patrick once had blood. It’s not getting easier.

She opens the door with the key he’s never asked her to return, bounces into the hallway and straight into the heart of the son she abandoned. Dexter is made of smiles, bright teeth, blue eyes, arms outstretched and shrieks of ‘mommy, mommy’. Patrick tries not to hate her, not because he’s, like, a good person or anything. Because he no longer has the energy left to waste on her bullshit.

That feels unfair because he _shouldn’t_ hate her, should he? They’re just two dumb kids who spent too much time blind to the consequences of their actions. But now the consequence is tangible, dressed in shorts and a polo shirt from Baby Gap and possessing what feels like each available inch of Patrick’s heart. Patrick likes to tell himself things are acrimonious on both sides, that Becky has just as many wounds as he does. It’s becoming harder and harder to believe that’s true.

“Oh. Who’s this?” she asks, subtly shoving at Hemmy sniffing around her knees, looking at Dexter but aiming it at Pete.

It doesn’t look good, he concedes; Pete’s clothes, Pete’s shoes, Pete’s _dog_.

“Pete!” Dexter squeals, grabby hands at inked skin. It gives Patrick an immense thrill of perverse satisfaction that Dex has a new favorite. Even if that favorite isn’t _him._ Pete is lounging against the living room doorway, his pink polo shirt is very tight, very short and, Patrick has to admit, very gay.

Patrick smiles, grimaces, whatever, “This is Pete. My friend.”

“I know all of your friends,” says Becky, in a tone that suggests there aren’t that many to know. As if she has any right to comment on the life she walked away from.

Against the doorframe, Pete tenses ever so slightly. Patrick feels himself go cold from head to toe, a rigid lack of heat crawling down his spine to pool in the crystal-salt of cold sweat that blooms in the small of his back.

They both know what’s implicit in her question, the statement that lurks behind the platitude as she assesses Pete with a look that’s half dirty venom and half the thrill of getting one over on Patrick. One look around the apartment should let her know she’s gotten every one-up she’s ever likely to need.

He looks at Pete and silently begs, ‘please be nice’.

“Not this one!” Pete squares his shoulders and grins, hand extended to shake. “Nice to meet you.”

Becky doesn’t look as though she thinks it’s nice to meet Pete. She’s all suspicion, glancing through the apartment like she thinks they’ll have left the evidence of a torrid affair laid out across the floor. Lube and condoms on the kitchen counter, maybe. Sex toys on the coffee table. You know, something like that.

“He’s just a friend, Becky.” Patrick pretends it doesn’t hurt to shape his mouth to the words. By the wall, Pete does a far worse job of covering it, eyes tight at the corners — in a wince or a scowl, Patrick can’t tell. He knows it makes his chest hurt, draws the band around his ribs even tighter as he shoves his hands into his pockets and raises his chin. “You can’t just — I’m not some kind of _predator_.”

She doesn’t answer. She’s good at that. Her glare stings as she stoops to grab Dexter’s bag and heads for the door. He can fake like it’s not humiliating to have to call her back so he can kiss his son goodbye. She leaves, like she always does, in a cloud of perfume and ill intentions, the walls humming and unsettled with the hurt of it. He watches her load Dex into the car, then waves until long after they’re out of sight.

(He knows she’ll tell him that Dexter doesn’t ask for him the whole time he’s with her. It tears him bloodied that he can’t decide if he’s devastated that he’s so forgettable, or relieved for Dexter’s sake that that’s the case.)

It’s not that he wants her to stay. He doesn’t love her, with hindsight he’s not sure he ever did, he just wishes things could be different.

The apartment is a dandelion with the fuzz blown away, the stalk left bare and inelegant, discarded and trampled. Lacking purpose. Hemmy woofs mournfully in the direction of his recently-departed buddy. Patrick leans into the wall and raises a hand when he hears footsteps cross the hall towards him.

“Don’t,” he says, like he knows Pete wants to touch him. He’s like an addict in withdrawal and he can’t _deal_ with someone else’s emotions right now. He’s shying in on himself, something ugly and twisted. He breathes, the summer air sticky and tasting of gasoline. “Just — take me out and get me wasted.”

Pete does exactly that.

*

The invitation makes it sound like it’s not a big deal. A throwaway text in the midst of a back-and-forth about Bowie albums. Just a gathering at Pete’s parent’s place for Fourth of July festivities served up in the form of overcooked hamburgers and regrettable amounts of alcohol. Patrick’s not a glittering socialite but like, this seems fine.

Pete shows up ten minutes late and leaning on the asthmatic horn of his Montero, hanging out of the driver’s side window and beating percussion into the bodywork. Dexter squeals and bounces and screams his name, twisting snakelike and devilish as Patrick juggles keys, diaper bag and a eleven-dollar bottle of Sauvignon he can’t afford.

“You didn’t need to bring anything,” Pete insists, smiling that lopsided smile that makes Patrick’s stomach backflip.

“I sort of did,” Patrick points out, because momma didn’t raise a heathen. “You’re late.”

“Fashionably,” Pete’s grin widens as he jacks up the stereo. “Happy treason day, Little Dudes junior and senior!”

Pete’s folks live someplace up in Wilmette, off Linden and on an avenue named after a tree or something. Oak? Laurel? Patrick sort of got turned around on street signs but it’s out by the country club Patrick’s dad always wanted to join (but couldn’t afford) and it looks like something from a fucking John Hughes movie. Dexter hums happily from the backseat of the Montero in a car seat Pete liberated from Lullabye.

“You never said you grew up in what basically amounts to the Home Alone house,” Patrick mutters, blushing at the bitterness but between Pete’s fancy, grownup apartment and all-American, colonial-style dream childhood home, he’s feeling pretty fucking shitty.

Pete smiles, “Just call me Pete McAllister.”

Patrick doesn’t.

They head inside and Pete makes introductions to his mom, his brother and sister and enough family friends and neighbors that Patrick loses track. Pete’s dad is out back waving barbecue tongs at anyone that gets too close to the grill, making promises that sound like threats about stuffing everyone full of meat. Patrick can tell which parent provided Pete with his sense of humor.

Then Patrick, he notices something. He notices that _everyone_ is wandering around in bathing suits. He’s about to enquire about the avant garde dress code when Dexter, wide-eyed and clinging to Patrick as a dozen strangers coo and touch and kiss him, points a finger like an accusation.

“Splash!” shrieks Dexter, and Patrick sees it.

The pool. The kind of pool Patrick dreamt about as a kid and nightmares about as a father. The kind of pool with a tiny springboard to the side, stuffed full of cartoon-bright inflatables that will sing a siren song to his risk-tolerant toddler.

Patrick is close to certain that he’s going to murder Pete. He’ll probably drown him, ironically, haul the body out back and dump him on the golf course at the country club. Humboldt Park is definitely more traditional, Patrick feels as though he’ll be betraying the pulse of Chicago that beats in his veins, but he’s willing to work with what he’s got.

“You said _party_ ,” he says, beyond irritated and into apoplectic. “Not _pool_.”

“I _inferred_ pool when I told you pants were optional,” Pete shrugs, already out of his jeans (suspiciously loose, now Patrick comes to think about it) and into obnoxiously loud Hawaiian print swim shorts. “You failed to read my tone.”

“You tell me pants are optional at your _apartment_ ,” Patrick argues back. “‘Pants optional’ means _nothing_ to you! Dexter will —”

As if on cue, called to arms by the way the pool water reflects like starlight in Pete’s eyes, Dexter grabs a sideburn in each tiny, sweaty little fist, shaking Patrick furiously as he shouts, “Go! Daddy, _go_!”

“Little dude, we _can’t_! I have _no_ shorts,” Patrick objects, valiantly listing reasons with the tick of his fingers. “ _No_ water wings —”

“Don’t worry,” smirks Pete, doing an enticing impression of someone that would like, very much, to be punched square in the dick. “I’ll be your lifesaver, you just hold on tight.”

“— and _no_ desire to stand in _cold_ water in front of a bunch of _strangers_ ,” Patrick continues with a glare he hopes is conveying how close to certain death Pete is skating. “And the water wings are for the _toddler_ , not for me.”

“The pool’s heated? If that helps?”

Of _course_ it is.

Dexter’s lower lip trembles, blue eyes brimmed with unshed tears as Patrick sighs, defeated.

“ _Fine_ , but you need to loan me some shorts. And I just want you to know,” he calls at Pete’s back as he disappears into the house in search of spare shorts and, maybe, the last remaining shred of Patrick’s dignity, “that blackmail is a _felony_.”

“I’d say _that_ was extortion,” Pete’s dad says from the grill, looking every inch the middle-aged suburbanite in his polo shirt by Ralph Lauren and sandals-with-socks by Enough Years of Parenting to No Longer Give a Fuck. Patrick likes him a little less than he did initially (a middle class Al Bundy, handing out mojitos alongside awful dad jokes) when he winks over his glass. “Which is a misdemeanor at best… and he knows a _great_ lawyer.”

“Of course he does,” Patrick mutters ominously, “people like him always do.”

*

A couple hours later, and he’s almost ready to admit he’s having fun.

He sits by the pool in Pete’s dad’s swimming trunks — louder and more obnoxiously bright even than Pete’s, too big even with the drawstring cinched in tight — feet kicking through the water as he sips on a drink that’s more chunks of pineapple, maraschino cherries and paper umbrella than _actual_ liquid. In the pool, Pete dutifully tows Dexter through the water, humming the Jaws theme as he goes.

There’s something ethereal about the way the water catches in Pete’s hair, the way it glitters like diamonds against the chlorine-trashed mess of it. He’s turning darker in the sun, tattoos shining freshpaintslick against the caramel-sweetness of his skin. Patrick could crush on him based on how he looks, but he’s falling in love with him for the way he looks at Dexter, the way the gold in his eyes sparkles as they splash together.

He’s close to certain that his best friend shouldn’t have the pulsed-deep ache of his heart caught up in the way he smiles across the true-blue sparkle of a suburban swimming pool.

“You having fun, sweetheart?” Dale takes a seat on the lounger to his right, sipping her own ridiculous drink. “Pete doesn’t bring friends home that often…”

Patrick can hear the inference loaded thick onto the word _friends_. He stares hard at his very orange drink and asks, “Does yours taste, uh… _purple_? Mine tastes purple.”

Dale sips, contemplative, watching the way Pete spins, Dexter held aloft and splashing crystal drops of water across the pool, dark spots left on Patrick’s shirt. This moment — fragile, delicate, the tensile luster of soap bubbles drifting across backyards in summer — will last only as long as it takes Pete to move on. Patrick and Dexter won’t feature when there’s a new Mikey to take their place.

“He told me once,” she says eventually, rolling the umbrella against the rim of her glass, “that the hardest thing about being gay was knowing he’d most likely never have kids. Peter — _my_ Peter,” she clarifies, like they have one each, matching Peters to bond over, “found the daycare thing impossible to understand but… I get it. I can’t imagine him anywhere else.”

Patrick has forgotten to apply sunblock. He was too busy slathering it on Dexter. He can feel the tight heat of sunburn scorching the back of his neck, his damp shirt creasing against it in the same way the skin of his toes creases in the water. He pulls a face at Dexter as they drift past, Pete on his back and Dexter sitting on his stomach, a tiny captain setting course.

“Boat, daddy!” Dexter squeals, slapping little palms against Pete’s wet skin. Pete is singing My Heart will Go On, off-key, off-beat. “Look!”

The smile that tugs at Patrick’s lips hurts, aching sore at the corners like it’s held in place by barbed wire. “I see you, little dude.”

“He cares about you, you know,” Dale says, hand against his shoulder. “Both of you.”

God knows, it would hurt less if that wasn’t true. Patrick nods, though, chin jerking like a marionette as he fakes a grin and leans into the press of her palm. “Yeah, I — I care about him, too. He’s, uh — he’s my best friend.”

Dale’s smile is sad, the reflection of something still and hurt flickering like it’s caught underwater, drifting through smoke. “He’s had a lot of _friends_ , Patrick, most of them end up hurting him.”

It sounds like a warning flavored with a plea. Pete breaks the spell by paddling over, hoisting Dexter, wet and dripping, into Patrick’s lap. Patrick looks down into the eyes that mirror his own, sea glass gaze tinged serious over rosebud lips. He’s worth it. He’s worth every aching throb of Patrick’s fucked-raw heart.

“ _Heeey_ , Hatman, chillin’ over here in your little Hatcave — ha! Get it? It’s funny because you wear hats! And it sounds kinda like —”

“Like Batman,” Patrick rolls his eyes and ducks away as Pete tries to yank the peak of his cap over his eyes, “yeah, I get it, thanks. How long were you working on that one?”

“An hour? Hour and a half, maybe?” Patrick pretends he’s not hung up on the way Pete’s hand looks against his thigh, the way his fingertips dig through the dusting of coppery hair. Patrick’s a terrible liar, the fucking worst, but he’ll blame sunburn, rosacea or a fondness for rogue for the flush on his cheeks before he’ll admit he’s blushing. “You look a little pink,” fuck Pete Wentz, smiling like he doesn’t get it, “something wrong?”

“You want a hotdog, little dude?” Patrick chooses to ignore him in favor of Dexter, twisting soap bar slippery, in an attempt to throw himself, headfirst, into the water. “Come on, let’s go get you something to eat.”

It’s getting dark when they’ve eaten, sunlight shifting from the brilliant gold of late afternoon to summer-soft pinks streaking pretty across the sky. Patrick lies on his back, watching the way the stars spring shy, pin-pricking where the vista above deepens to dark velvet, Dexter drooping against his chest. Pete lies on the lounger next to him, craving touch like Patrick craves company, an ankle hooked over Patrick’s as he lies on his side shining golden in twilight.

“I should get him to bed,” Patrick observes, rigorous application of bedtime biting him in the ass for once. “Hey, my mom lives _super_ close, could I call a cab?”

Pete’s teeth, too big, too white, too sharp in the corners, gleam as he nudges Patrick’s bare foot with a grin. “You’ll miss the fireworks.”

Dale wanders past, handing out more ill-advised drinks and says, “Stay over, honey.”

Pete smiles a little wider. “Yeah, stay over.”

It’s the alcohol that makes Patrick’s head swim, he swears it’s definitely that and not the way Pete’s eyes shift shade in the light to something dark and dangerous. He’s drunk but like, in a good way, tip-turned on good beer and better cocktails, fruit juice and rum clinging sticky-sweet on his breath as he laughs at the blushing crescent of the moon. On the other side of the yard, Pete’s dad is shouting something about fireworks. Patrick’s honestly not sure anyone here is sober enough to be trusted with explosives.

“Hey,” he says, struggling onto his elbows to watch a cluster of drunk dudes — all of them old enough to know better — gather around a box of brightly colored burn injuries waiting to happen. “If you hit nine-one in your phone, will it like, I dunno, _guess_ what you’re gonna do and summon every police car in the county? Or would you just be, uh, you know, _prepared_?”

“On the one hand,” Pete raises his left hand, like Patrick doesn’t know what a hand is, “my mom will _kill_ you stone dead if you wind up with twenty firetrucks out front. On the other,” the right hand goes up this time, “ _firefighters_.” Patrick pretends he doesn’t feel a stab of jealousy in his gut at the thought of Pete flirting with some imaginary firefighter. Pete flops to his stomach and blinks up from under his bangs. “They’ll be fine, man. My dad’s been drunkenly firing rockets around the backyard since I was Dexter’s age. No one’s lost an eye yet. Stay over.”

The first firework streaks into the sky, bursting crimson and scattering color through the depths of Pete’s eyes. Dexter jumps, nails biting into Patrick’s skin as his mouth slips into a crooked ‘O’ in the center of his face. Patrick aches to take Pete’s hand.

“Fine,” he says, as the second rocket whistles skyward, comet trail streaking gold in its wake. “We’ll stay.”

Pete nudges their feet together once more then rolls to his back, hands tucked behind his head. There’s a flash of underarm hair on display, his nipples pebbled in the cool of the darkness. Patrick shivers a little in his damp shirt and borrowed swim trunks. Between them, Dexter shouts himself hoarse, screaming at the vista that paints the sky above them like it’s a religious experience.

If Patrick could hold a moment, if he could twist it into something tangible and slip it into his wallet next to the picture he keeps of Dex in the billfold, he’s pretty sure this would be it.

*

Insomnia has never been an issue for Patrick. Usually, his problem creeps in from the other direction, permanent exhaustion that knocks him stupid on the couch by eight at night. He can’t count the number of times he’s jolted awake, confused, TV fuzzed grey with static at two in the morning, his neck stiff and his back cramped.

But right now, in a tiny twin bed in Wilmette, Dexter snoring in his ear and the wall feeling wrong against his back, Patrick can’t sleep for shit.

This is Pete’s old room and it throbs with the pulse of the teenager he used to be. Patrick has traced the lines of every poster (Pete had, _has_ , horrible taste in music), eyed the soccer trophies and ribbons on the shelf and rubbed his nose against the Star Wars comforter, searching desperate for some hint of Pete’s scent caught in the cotton.

Finally, he gives in, rolls to his feet and pads across a room illuminated only by the streetlights outside and the thin, blue light of his cell phone screen as he considers the paperbacks stacked on the desk. It’s exactly what Patrick thought it would be; J D Salinger, Harper Lee, Hemingway (of course), American classics lined up like an emo kid’s ‘to read’ list. Patrick remembers not hating Catcher in the Rye and picks it up, thumbing through the pages idly.

“Can’t sleep?”

The book pulled back over his shoulder, Patrick turns, leaps and throws himself between Dexter and the voice of a potential murderer and international child abductor. From the doorway, dressed in Star Wars boxer briefs and nothing else, Pete grins, arms folded across his chest and fluorescent flicker streetlights painting him interesting shades of shadow.

“What’re you gonna do?” Pete asks, teasing. “Beat me to death with modern American literature? My ninth grade English teacher couldn’t do it, what makes _you_ so special?”

Feeling stupid, Patrick tosses the book back to the desk, whispering with his eyes on Dexter, “You scared the fucking shit out of me, douchebag, who sneaks around in the fucking dark like that?”

“Heard you moving around.” Pete flops onto the other bed, the one with plain grey sheets that Patrick avoided because it didn’t… it just didn’t. Didn’t appeal, didn’t seem right. He pats the mattress next to him, a dangerous invitation. “It’s kind of concerning that my mom was totally right about the walls being like paper...”

Oh.

Oh, he means like, when he used to fuck other people in this room, on that bed. That’s totally cool. Patrick is _totally okay_ with that mental image. He hopes, spitefully, that the sheets have been boil-washed before he’s put his son to sleep on them. Across the room, Dexter stirs, soft and sleepy. He’s Patrick’s safety net, the reminder that nothing can possibly happen with him in the room. That in mind, he slips onto the bed next to Pete.

They fit together, puzzle-piece-pressed, hips finding home in one another as Patrick lies on his back and Pete tucks into his side. Patrick hasn’t shared a twin bed since high school. Hasn’t shared a bed _at all_ since Becky left. Not that they shared a bed in anything but the most literal of ways. He’s still sort of stinging from the indignity of a pity fuck on his twentieth birthday, the last time he had an orgasm that wasn’t self-induced. This isn’t how he imagined his early twenties. If it wasn’t for the presence of his son ten feet away, he’s close to certain he’d be sporting a semi right now.

Unfortunately, it turns out Patrick can only control his mouth or his cock at any given moment, words spilling hot and thick over his lips as he whispers, “Listen, I — uh, about the time I, uh, came in my pants…” Pete snorts, Patrick hates him. “No, don’t — don’t fucking _laugh_ at me, dude, it’s — it’s super _not_ fucking funny, you dick, I —”

“I’m not laughing at you, I swear,” Pete rubs his cheek against Patrick’s shoulder and goosebumps prickle in his wake, “I wish you’d told me, though.”

Suspicious, Patrick asks, “Told you _what_?”

“That you’d never, you know, been with a guy before,” Patrick considers the morality of smothering Pete, _to death_ , with his own stupid pillow, “I could’ve, well, I don’t know. But maybe, uh… I guess I get why you freaked out.”

And Patrick, he’s gritting his teeth, every muscle taut-tense as he hisses, “Tell me, _please_ , more of this _fascinating_ story. I’m on the edge of my — _your_ — fucking _mattress_ with anticipation right now.”

“Listen,” Pete must think he’s soothing right now, stroking patterns into the cotton of Patrick’s shirt, “I get it, I do. It’s a big step to take and you, well, you clearly went a pretty long way convincing yourself you were straight.” He gestures at Dexter. So lost is Patrick’s shit right now, that he’s not sure he could locate it with both hands, a map and prior training. “But, it would’ve been great if you’d _told_ me I was, like, your big gay awakening —”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Patrick wishes he didn’t sound quite so much like a middle-aged dad or his grandma. “My _big gay awakening_? My — my gay is fully fucking… _woke_ , thank you very much!”

“It — it _is_?” Pete stammers and, hey, _fuck_ that guy for sounding like he doesn’t believe him. Patrick might not have had like, a _lot_ of cock, but he’s had _some_! “Oh, so you just, like… the whole coming in your pants _thing_? Is — is that a problem you have, uh, generally? Or…?”

If Pete wasn’t wedged between Patrick and the wall, he would’ve thrown his ass onto the rug by now.

“No, it’s _not_ a problem I have _generally_!” Patrick should probably lower his voice from ‘dull roar’ to ‘furious stage whisper’. He takes a deep breath and tries again, quieter this time. “Don’t fucking flatter yourself, Wentz, I didn’t see you and — and… I’m fucking _bi_ , dude. Like, you know that’s a thing, right? Dexter’s mom and I, we — I — I fucking _cared_ about her, you know? And the — the _thing_ on the couch was just… it’s been a while, _okay_?”

“Oh,” is all Pete says for the longest time, his eyes wide against the backdrop of Patrick’s furious breathing. If it wasn’t like, two in the morning, he’d get up and leave, he’d walk to his mom’s house, he’d — “That — that’s totally cool, that’s _fine_ , I just thought —”

“Well fucking _don’t_ , yeah?”

They fall silent. Patrick’s pretty sure it’s uncomfortable. Right now, Patrick’s not entirely sure of anything: the way his skin stretches too small over his bones, the way the light slants in through the blinds, the way the mattress feels under his back. Patrick is built entirely on the indecision of uncertainty. If his cock was half-hard before — _if_ — he’s pretty sure it’s crawled back up inside of him right now. Irritatingly, he still sort of wishes Pete would kiss him, though.

Finally, Pete says, “I’m — I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

And Patrick, he’s not feeling particularly charitable as he rolls to his side and shows Pete the curve of the ass he’s more than free to kiss right now. “Go to hell.” He rolls back, just as fast. “Actually, you know what? Fuck _you_. I’m — I’m fucking _tired_ of this, okay? I just… I’m not my sexuality, I’m — I’m _Patrick,_ can’t I — can’t I just be Patrick?”

This time, when Patrick tries to roll away, Pete hauls him back. Patrick’s got a weight advantage, a _distinct_ one, but Pete is strong. Stronger than he looks. Their chests press close as Pete holds him, strokes a hand through his hair. Patrick is burning up, caught between shoving away and pressing desperately closer. Pete hasn’t asked if Patrick is into him, Patrick’s not sure if that’s because he doesn’t want to know or because it’s painfully, _pathetically_ obvious.

He thinks he feels the flutter of Pete’s heart against his own. At least, he tells himself, that means Pete’s as fucking terrified as he is.

“You’re you,” Pete assures him, and if there’s ever been a moment between them that Patrick should seize with the signature of their lips sealed soft together, _this_ is that moment. He doesn’t, bites down hard on his lip instead. “Whatever you that is, it’s pretty awesome to me.”

Patrick doesn’t dare ask what he means.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are still enjoying it! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are amazing or, if you'd like, come find me on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.
> 
> See you next time!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is friendship set on fire...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello, hello!
> 
> I hope everyone has had a great week. I know some of you are heading back to school right about now so here's hoping this can cheer you up if that's something that's... not awesome for you. 
> 
> Once again, a huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone who's reading, kudosing, commenting, talking to me on Tumblr. You guys are amazing :D
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/29194878397/in/dateposted/)

“What’s your favorite animal, little dude?” Pete asks from the far side of the kitchen on a sun-soaked Saturday morning. Handy Manny is on the TV, Dexter shouting at the screen in a garbled mess of Spanglish. Today’s shirt simply says ‘Joe’. Patrick doesn’t want to ask.

Patrick hasn’t slept for real in three days. The heat makes Dexter grizzle and cry, leaves him sprawled across Patrick’s bed most nights under the lazy rotation of the ceiling fan, consuming more mattress real estate than any toddler has any right to take. So, unthinking, he says, “I like whales. Turtles are a close second, though.”

“Nice,” Pete nods approvingly, rooting through Patrick’s kitchen for the kind of snacks favored by five-year-olds; string cheese, lunchables (knock-off, store-brand, obviously) and anything branded Hostess. “But I meant little dude lite. Not the full-sugar, almost-full-size version.”

Patrick rests his hot cheek against his folded arms on the scratched-up kitchen table and thinks maybe Pete will believe the rose-bloom blush that paints him crimson is just heatstroke. “Oh. Right. I knew that.”

“What about you, huh?” Pete has found those lunchables, is sharing one out between him and Dexter. Patrick watches the way his fingers work as he divides up mini soft tacos. There are a thousand tiny things that Pete Wentz does that make Patrick ache down into the marrow of his bones. “Do you like… lions? Tigers? Bears?”

Oh my.

Patrick sighs and adjusts his cap on the sweat-slick mess of his hair. He can feel it curling at the back of his neck, sticking to his skin and intensifying, _amplifying_ , the heat. “He likes the aquarium.” Pete looks up, eyes glowing gold. “I took him a couple times, when he was tiny. My mom bought — she got the three of us a gift certificate but Becky didn’t — she never had the time. So I took him, and he just… stared. All day. I wanted to start him a college fund because, seriously, marine biologist in the making, but, like, I’ll do that once he stops needing new shoes every other week.”

Patrick falls silent and Pete doesn’t move beyond layering up another taco for Dex. Internally, Patrick is making calculations for Dexter’s lunchbox in the coming week, how he can replace the lunchable with a bologna sandwich without needing to go to the expense of buying another multi pack. Look, it’s not that he’s completely _poor_ or anything, he doesn’t need _pity_. He just has to take it easy, watch the numbers.

Finally, he says, “But, yeah. He likes the aquarium.”

Pete looks as though he might want to say something, thick brows drawn low and mouth a hard, flat line. Instead, he smiles as Dexter shoves a half-chewed wrap into his mouth, delighted num-num noises pinning the corners of his lips. Patrick wonders — absent, removed — how Dexter might adjust to two men in his life, to Pete’s phone charging on the cold side of the bed, the laundry pile a mess of boxer briefs.

“Well,” says Pete, before Patrick can be drawn too far into the impossibility of it. “I guess we’re going to the aquarium! You want to see the fishes, little dude?”

Amongst the kind of excitement that requires measurement on the Saffir-Simpson scale, Patrick almost can’t make himself heard. His voice is small, quiet, as he makes his objection. He sits, unmoving, amongst a blur of brightly colored shoes pushed onto feet robed in mismatched socks (this is Pete, not Dexter). “I can’t afford it.”

Pete makes a noise, a sort of derisive half-snort in the back of his nose, still cramming on his sneakers and moving on to Dexter’s. Patrick still doesn’t move. “Pete, I said —”

“I heard you,” Dexter’s left shoe is now in place as he bounces, excited because Pete is excited even though he doesn’t really comprehend the reason, “I’ll pay.” Before Patrick can object, he’s barreling on, “I get a discount through work _and_ we live here so, like, it’s barely ten bucks a ticket or something. Come on, man. Just — let me, okay?”

Pete is a hurricane of good intentions. Patrick can only resist for so long and soon they’re heading for the El, Dexter in the stroller, past the faded, summertime lawns. The neighborhood buzzes with school’s-out chaos, kids chasing water pistol streams through backyards and between parked cars. Dexter watches with the kind of stretched-wide grin that Patrick can’t help but mirror, adjusting his hat as Pete loiters along beside them.

Patrick could very much imagine Pete slipping an arm around him right now, the smell of hot skin and Axe deodorant from the hollow under his arm. If Pete, you know, _does_ , then Patrick will lean into him. He’ll press his cheek to Pete’s shoulder and feel the rhythm of the sidewalk under their feet echoing through the cavity of Pete’s ribs. But Pete doesn’t, just smiles, and grabs the front of the stroller as they ascend the steps to the platform.

Trains and blue sky, the faint smell of piss, and Chicago rolling by beyond the windows. The world is a clatter of color that Dexter watches with wide eyes and yelped observations in monosyllables — _Train! Sky! Pete!_ Patrick wishes with all his heart for the simplicity of life as a toddler, to want and take and feel no remorse for consequences. To know he’s the subject of unending, unconditional love.

“The two of you are wonderful parents,” says a lady on her way off the train. Patrick smiles blankly, uncomprehending. Pete gets it though and rests his hand lightly on Patrick’s knee. Oh. She thinks they’re…

_Oh_.

Patrick clears his throat, says, too quickly, “We’re not —”

“Thanks,” Pete cuts over him, glowing golden in the way the light floods through the windows. Patrick’s heart takes a violent lurch to the left and plummets, bottomed out through the rails and crashing to the city street below. “We’re really proud of our little man. It’s all this guy, though,” he nudges his cheek to Patrick’s shoulder; Patrick is going to fucking pass out, “he’s an _amazing_ dad. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

“I don’t see a wedding ring,” she teases, prodding Pete with the toe of her shoe. All of the air in the carriage has turned to molten liquid and Patrick is drowning. He sinks his nails into the meat of his thigh — the one undecorated by the curve of Pete’s hand — and counts the buildings on the horizon. He thinks he’s smiling, a stunned, rictus twist of his lips.

Pete is either oblivious or cruel as he says, “Oh, one day. We kinda put the cart before the horse and now we’re paying for it. Literally.”

The thing is, Patrick can picture it. He can see the line of a wedding band etched between the knuckles of Pete’s third finger, left hand. They chatter banally, Pete and the lady-they-don’t-know, and Patrick wonders what she sees.

“Why’d you do that?” Patrick asks, when she’s gone and Pete’s pulled his hand back into his lap. The spot on Patrick’s knee feels too hot, like the outline of Pete’s palm will be left behind, scorched into his skin like a brand. “Why’d you lie to her?”

He means ‘why’d you lie to _me_ ’. He wants Pete to say he wants it to be true, that he needs to lose himself in the fantasy as much as Patrick, if only for a moment, if only with a stranger as their validation. Instead, Pete shrugs and touches Dexter’s cheek. “She said a nice thing. I didn’t want to make her feel weird about it, you know?”

But _Patrick_ feels weird about it. He doesn’t talk again until they’re inside The Shedd, until Pete is tearing ass across the displays with Dexter in his arms as Patrick trails along behind. He collects abandoned sun hats and shoes like seashells, loading them into the stroller as Pete talks and Dexter listens.

“You see this?” Pete asks, crowded up close to the glass. Dexter’s eyes are perfect rounds of crystal blue, sparked with diamonds in the light of the tank. “This is a clownfish.”

“’Emo,” says Dexter, softly, fat little fingertips brushing the glass like he can reach inside and grab a handful of glitter and gold from amongst the reef. “Daddy, look! ’ _Eeemo_.”

“Is he talking about me?” Pete asks. “Or the fish?”

It would be easier, Patrick’s sure of it as he snorts and slams his shoulder to Pete’s, if he wasn’t quite so adorable. And dorky. And funny. Dexter is chanting over and over, a steady stream of babbled ‘’emo, daddy, ’emo, ’emo’.

“I see him.” Patrick takes Dexter from Pete’s arms, feels the solid weight of him wrapped to his side as they stare up into the tank. Pete’s hand burns a brand through the shoulder of Patrick’s shirt, fingers squeezing gently.

Patrick can see them — Dex, Pete and himself — reflected back in the glass of the tank. He sees what the lady on the El saw and he wants it so much the acid in his stomach burns with it. Without thinking — because he’s the resident expert at not thinking — he turns and presses a kiss to Pete’s cheek. The skin is warm under his lips, rough with the threat of stubble that darkens his jaw. Patrick thinks of the couch, of the desperate way Pete kissed him in the dark.

When he pulls back, Pete’s staring. Not in a smiling indulgently sort of way, either. Patrick is panic-hot, glowing with it. He wonders if he should apologize, if they’ve fallen over the line and into inappropriate displays of affection.

“Awww!” Dex squeals, grabbing Pete’s face in both hands and pressing a wet, smacking kiss that smears spit the length of his nose. “Nice kiss! Kiss Pete! _Mmmwah_!”

It’s easy not to talk about it when they’re laughing.

They move through the exhibits. Pete insists they sit too close to the dolphins, Dexter squealing with delight as they’re soaked with splashback. They share ice cream cones, passing them amongst the three of them in the way his mom would disapprove of until the flavors mix and mingle into syrupy sickly-sweetness on cold, pink tongues. Pete wipes a smear of mint choc chip across Patrick’s nose. Dexter loses it, laughing like they’re Bert and Ernie as Pete leans in and licks it away.

But he laughs when he does it, so Patrick tries not to overthink it. Not to make it into something it’s not.

(Wait. _Is_ it something? Or not?)

Patrick slips to the bathroom late in the day. He’s smiling as he washes his hands, captivated by the way his lips shape around it in the mirror. He hasn’t smiled like this since — well, ever. Back in the body of the aquarium and he can’t spy a soft, blond head close to slick red and black bangs. His eyes rove, lazy to worried to frantic, pushing his way through the crowds as he imagines a thousand different scenarios that end with broken bones, tiny teeth chipped, little eyes closed…

He sees them back by the great barrier reef. Two heads bent close together, Dexter’s eyes lolling closed as Pete’s lips shift in a murmur. He feels like he’s peeping as he creeps closer, his heart swelling ripe and fleshy in his chest as he hears Pete speak.

“You see him there, hmm? Right down there, watch how he moves his tail fins. He’s taking care of his babies, you see? Because that’s what Nemo does, he takes care of the babies, just like your daddy. Only daddy Nemos take care of the babies. Isn’t that cool? Your daddy is pretty awesome, you know that? He loves you _so_ much and one day you’re going to realize everything he — everything he’s done for you. And you deserve it, little dude, all of it.”

Patrick clears his throat and stares at the pattern of the tiles on the floor, the flood of blood to his cheeks is heat layered on yet more sticky summer heat. No one has ever really said anything positive about his parenting before. Sure, his mom tells him he’s doing great, but he’s always kind of assumed that was more a testament to her parenting than his. The pink that stains his cheeks is a little less embarrassment, a little more pride as he reaches out to take his son.

“He’s beat,” he observes, determined not to talk about what he just heard. Pete nods and smiles the smile that makes Patrick ache. “We should head back.”

Pete vanishes into the gift shop and returns with a clownfish plushie, pressed into Dexter’s arms with a flourish.

“For you, little man,” he says. Dexter’s delight radiates like sunrise, eyes bright as he sinks his fingertips into orange and white fuzz. Then he licks it which, _ew_ , that’s sort of gross. Still, exposure to bacteria is _probably_ a good thing.

“’Emo,” he mumbles, face pressed to the fur. Patrick is never going to pry that from his sweaty little hands.

The El is packed tight, so many bodies sweating through the summer heat. The smell is close to offensive as they lean in a corner, shoulders touching as Patrick holds Dexter and Pete holds the stroller. It’s too busy to talk but Pete drops his cheek to Patrick’s shoulder, hot breath chasing beads of sweat along the sticky-wet column of Patrick’s throat. His nose is close to Dexter’s and, as Patrick looks down, he watches the way they pull faces at one another across the stretch of his RUN DMC shirt.

He wishes things were different, that Becky was different. But, he has this moment at least and drops his free hand to the small of Pete’s back, tracing love songs into the damp cotton of Pete’s shirt.

At the apartment, Patrick changes Dexter, slips him into pajamas and into his bed. Pete reads the bedtime story — he’s better at the voices — as they lie, bookends either side of Dexter. Patrick should have been graduating college this summer. Three years ago, he was dreaming of California, now he’s dreaming of domesticity.

Dexter is asleep before Pete gets to ‘and they all lived happily ever after’. He says it anyway, like he’s jinxing something if he doesn’t. They creep on tiptoes to the kitchen and awkward silence. Something has shifted, something tangible and desperate but Patrick can ignore it if Pete will.   

“Did you want to stay for dinner? I think I’ve got some macaroni in the cabinet, I could —”

Pete, apparently, won’t ignore it. “Why can’t we be more?”

The reasons are innumerable, vast and compelling. Patrick can’t think of a single one that doesn’t sound dumb as shit if he says it out loud.

“I, uh — it’s complicated,” Patrick stammers, backing up into the counter.

“You know how I feel,” Pete is closing the gap, removing the safety catch and spraying words like bullets around the room, “you know what I want and — fuck, are you gonna stand there and tell me it’s not what _you_ want?”

Patrick sinks his nails into the countertop and eyes Pete warily. He feels exposed, hunted, _wanted_. Pete’s eyes are starving as he crowds in close, as he cages Patrick in the bracket of his hands against the counter, one either side of Patrick’s hips.

“Tell me to stop,” he demands, lips very close. Patrick can taste the hint of cinnamon gum on Pete’s breath. He can see the flecks of amber, gold, copper and jade in his eyes. Patrick’s throat is tight, thick, his skin itching as he reaches up and cups Pete’s face softly in his hands. “You _want_ this.”

He traces the arch of Pete’s cheekbones, licks his lips and tells his hammering heart to chill for a minute before it ruptures in his chest. Before he spills blood like secrets and drowns them both in the thick, red choke of it. “I do, but —”

Pete doesn’t give him chance to finish. “But? _Bullshit_. Tell me to stop,” he says again, his hand sliding to the nape of Patrick’s neck. Outside, a car backfires some distant place on the block, the smell of someone’s barbecue drifting through the open window. Patrick spreads his legs as Pete slides between them. “I’m going to kiss you. Tell me to stop.”

Patrick beats him to it.

Pete’s lips are thick and soft under his own. He kisses desperate, his mouth hot and wet, easy with his tongue as he slips it into Patrick’s mouth. Patrick groans, low and resonant, as Pete fists the hair in his hand, dragging his head back, hauling his mouth closer. Pete kisses with life-or-death intensity, like he’s proving a point as his teeth dig into the flush of Patrick’s lower lip.

He’s a good kisser, hungry for it, tugging the ends of Patrick’s hair and whimpering something soft at the back of his throat. Patrick presses forward and rides the length of their dicks together. He’s not hard yet, neither is Pete, but fuck, as he rolls his hips in dirty circles, he’s pretty sure he’s getting there.

Cap shoved aside, Patrick pushes Pete back, presses him up against the refrigerator door. Magnets clatter to the floor, the letter T cracking under Patrick’s sneaker as he pushes closer. He can smell the sweat-salt of Pete’s skin, taste the way their tongues move together, twisting messy-wet and slippery. He wants to devour Pete, to sink to his knees and suck the velvet length of his cock until he comes, until he paints the inside of Patrick’s mouth with the taste of how much he wants this.

How much he wants _him_.

“Fuck, _fuck_ Patrick. We — we can take this slow,” Pete says, biting kisses to Patrick’s throat. Patrick goes for Pete’s zipper. “What do you want.”

There’s only one thing Patrick wants. He growls it through clenched teeth, around the way Pete’s button pops open and the thick, heavy weight of his cock strains the front of his shorts. “You.”

Their mouths meet again as Patrick thumbs open his own jeans. The head of his suddenly-swollen dick feels raw, torn tender and sticky against the front of his stretched out, wash-faded boxers. He licks against Pete’s teeth, cool and slick, and sinks his hands into the flesh of Pete’s hips. Pete grins, mouth quirking around the shape of Patrick’s tongue as he pulls back just enough to bite into the flesh of Patrick’s lip.

Patrick whispers, “Can I blow you?”

Pete is out of his shirt before Patrick has finished the sentence, cotton hitting linoleum with a thump.

Fuck, the _ink_. The stuff he never really gets to see under shirts and hoodies twisting dark and tempting across the salt-mist stretch of Pete’s skin. He’s gorgeous. Dark and fit and just the right side of broad, Patrick bites off the moan then thinks fuck it, it’s his apartment and Dexter’s bedroom door is closed, the soft ‘motherfuk’ slipping sharp over his lips. He kisses each one, leaves them shining slick under the glow of the kitchen light as he biteslicksucks across the canvas painted from Pete’s wrist to his shoulder.

Yeah, he’s got a bit of a tattoo worship thing going on. So fucking sue him.

He licks each link of the thorns across Pete’s collarbone, tastes the tang of sweat and bite of cologne before moving his mouth to the dark bud of Pete’s stiff, peaked nipple. He twists its twin, palming his own cock with his free hand, rubbing his thumb over the sticky, wound-raw tip that crests the waistband of his shorts. Pete grabs his wrist, sucks his thumb with vigorous intent and Patrick concentrates very hard on not blowing in his shorts. Again.

“You taste good,” Pete whispers, lips a breath from Patrick’s. His hand is at Patrick’s ass, slipping into the loose pocket of denim hanging slack against the curve of it, kneading over the flesh of his cheeks.

Patrick has forgotten how to be shy as he grinds their swollen cocks together and says, “I’ll bet you taste better.”

The linoleum is hard, cold, under his knees, Pete’s skin soft and warm under his lips. He kisses the tattoo low between Pete’s hip bones, traces the tip of his tongue to the silhouette of it. Pete’s stomach is smooth, shaved, the smell of his leaking cock caught thick in the cotton of his shorts. Patrick’s mouth waters, saliva welling thick under his tongue.

He’s always had a thing for sucking dick.

Pete’s hands frame his jaw, fingertips skating soft along the length of it as he holds Patrick’s face with reverence. He smiles, lips quirked above the desperate grasp of stuttering ribs as he says, “You look good on your knees.”

It’s not hard to tease when Pete is so fucking responsive, whining, writhing, begging against the refrigerator door as Patrick kisses along the band of his shorts. He jolts, spine stiff, as Patrick bites into the jut of his hip bone, relaxes with a moan as he chases the sting with his tongue, spit-wet and soft.

“Please,” Pete begs, cracking, breaking at the end. Patrick smirks, his hand shaped to the swell of his own cock through cotton. “Please, just — _please_.”

And Patrick, he’s about to cave, thumbs sinking with certainty into the waistband, intent on hauling them down and getting his mouth all over the lust-thick length of Pete’s swollen cock.

On the counter, his phone bursts into life.

They freeze, eyes on one another as You’re So Vain fills the kitchen. It’s the ringtone he assigned Becky in a fit of impotent rage at the unfairness of it all. His chest feels cold, stomach tight with dread as he wonders — does she _know_? Can she fucking _tell_?

“Don’t.” Pete’s intonation doesn’t rise, it’s not a question but a plea. Patrick’s going to vibrate out of his skin, guilt tearing terror through his gut as he staggers to his feet. “ _Don’t_.” Pete snags his wrist but he yanks his way free, buttoning his jeans around the throbbing guilt of his aching cock. “Patrick, _please_.”

“Hello?” he raises the phone to his ear, staring out of the window rather than meeting Pete’s eyes.

Becky sounds bored already. “Patrick? I just wanted you to know, it’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow, I’ll be collecting Dexter from daycare and bringing him to my place for the party.”

“What?” The words don’t make sense, the jumble of a half-shook Etch-a-Sketch as he grips his dizziness into the countertop. “I mean — uh, yeah. Sure. Of course. I’ll, uh, I’ll put some pajamas in his —”

“He doesn’t need _your_ clothes,” Becky cuts him off and Patrick wonders — the blood making its way back to his brain from his suddenly soft cock — how come they’re okay twelve days in fourteen.

Behind him, reflected in the night-sky-dark of the kitchen window, he sees Pete’s face twist up with dislike. His stomach shifts, guilt burning bile at the back of his throat. What the fuck was he thinking?

“Fine,” he bites his tongue, it’s not worth a fight, “whatever, I guess I’ll see you when you bring him back. Tuesday, right?”

Pete clears his throat and gusts a sigh, impossibly loud in the room. Patrick freezes, chilled to the very core as Becky asks, soft and dangerous, “Is someone there with you?”

“Just Pete,” he has nothing to lie about, no reason to be ashamed. Aside from the whole blowjob _incident_ , he’s pretty much totally innocent. ‘Oh sure, Becky, I was literally seconds away from deep-throating the guy I pay to take care of our kid, that’s cool, right?’ God, he is _so_ fucking _stupid_. “We took Dexter to The Shedd, I —”

“If something’s going on,” Becky’s voice is sweet, it makes the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, “I’ll find out.”

“Nothing’s going on, he’s just a _friend_ , okay?” Patrick snaps. Pete’s face is unreadable, lips thin, eyes fixed on something past Patrick. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

He ends the call and turns. Pete is pathetic and small against the refrigerator door, shirtless with his pants undone. Patrick doesn’t touch, but he knows without needing to that Pete’s cock will be as soft as his own right now. Their arousal, their high, is gone. Washed away on tides of reality as Patrick tosses his phone back onto the countertop.

“You’re still into her,” Pete says, voice dull as he reaches for his shirt. “You’re still into her but you’ll use me to get off.”

Patrick’s gut twists painfully, his knuckles washed-white as he digs his fingertips into his palms. “That’s _not_ true.”

“So, tell me, ’cause I’d really _love_ to fucking know, what _is_ true,” Pete is buckling his belt, heading for the door, “what — what the _fuck_ does she _have_ on you?”

How can he admit to being closeted by his ex in a game of piggy in the middle with his son as the prize? Patrick can’t afford a lawyer, his custody of Dexter unofficial and entirely at Becky’s whim. Patrick has never felt more pitiful as he blinks down at the toaster. He stays silent, pleads the fifth with a shrug. Behind him, he hears the clatter of Pete’s car keys, the thump of his footsteps towards the door.

“I’m falling for you,” Pete says from the doorway, voice flat and factual. It still tears holes in Patrick’s heart, leaves him bruise-tender and raw. “I’ll be your friend if that’s all you want, but — but you need to make up your fucking mind. I’m not here for a convenient _orgasm_ while you wait for your ex to — uh, _hello_ , fucking _newsflash_ — _never_ be into you.”

“Wait! I —”

The door closes — slams — behind him, heralding the red light on the baby monitor as Dexter springs awake, pissed off and overtired, Patrick whispers at the roar of the engine down on the street.

“I think I’m falling for you, too.”

*

“I care about him, you know?” Pete says, upside down on the couch. It makes his head feel heavy and light all at once, blood pooling where it shouldn’t and blurring the edges of his vision.

Joe sits in the sprung-out armchair on the other side of the coffee table, fingers steepled under his chin. Therapy on a budget. “I know.”

“And sometimes I think he cares about me, too. But, what if —” Pete takes his thumbs and presses them into his eye sockets until everything bursts purple and gold, “I don’t want to push him, you know?”

And Joe, he shoves another handful of chips into his mouth and nods around the crumbs. “I know.”

“Fuck you,” says Pete to the underside of the coffee table. “You don’t know shit.”

*

Patrick doesn’t see Pete at Lullabye on Tuesday. The Montero is out in the parking lot but the Jellybean Room only has Joe, his lips twisted in an insincere smile as he takes Dexter, confused and protesting, from Patrick’s arms.

“Pete’ll be along soon,” Joe assures Dex, some heavy implication that his absence is entirely the fault of Patrick. “You can hang out with me until he gets here.”

“Is Pete okay?” Patrick asks, unsure how much Joe knows but willing to guess from the glare he receives that it’s at least ‘enough’ if not ‘a lot’.

“He’s fine,” Joe doesn’t snap, professionalism firmly in place as he turns his back. Patrick knows he’s been dismissed and kisses his son a guilty goodbye.

*

He doesn’t hear from Pete for the rest of the week, the days stretching lonely and interminable as he realizes how much he’s come to depend on the company. Pete has been a constant for the past four months, the summer shaped by the curve of his grin, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles.

Now it’s just Patrick and an apartment devoid of adult company, cereal bowls mounting in the sink as he exists on Cinnamon Toast Crunch, sour gummy worms and endless rounds of guilty masturbation. He aches for the taste of Pete’s skin, fingers pressed deep into himself as he imagines Pete’s mouth around his cock.

He picks up a closing shift at XO while his mom takes Dexter, driven by nothing more than boredom and a fear that he might actually go blind if he touches himself once more.

He’s stacking the sneakers — Nike, white flashes on blue, red, black boxes like logoed Tetris blocks — when he hears a familiar voice at the other end of the stacks. He jerks upright, sticky hair sliding slick against his brow as his passes and whistle clatter against his chest. Purple hoodie, yellow pants, neon SnapBack, Gabe is talking loudly into a top of the range cellphone and considering the limited-edition Dunks on the shelf.

“— yeah, yeah, I gotta bounce, I’m about to order. Later,” he meets Patrick’s eyes and lights with recognition. Patrick’s chest feels a little warm; it’s nice to have friends. “ _Patrick_ , my guy!” he pulls Patrick into some kind of complicated handshake that Patrick fumbles, blushing, missing the high five at the end entirely and slapping wetly at Gabe’s wrist. “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” he lies. He can still see the way Pete’s eyes dimmed-dull every time he closes his own. “You?”

“Oh, you know me!” Patrick doesn’t, not really, but he gets the feeling that whatever there is to know of Gabe isn’t hidden in subtle places. He’s probably seen the extent of Gabe’s hidden depths over the few times they’ve met over the past few months. “Sorry to hear about you and Pete, though. I thought you seemed pretty solid, but…”

“Me? And… Pete?” Patrick’s brow is furrowed, his neck cramping from straining up to look at Gabe.

“Well, I figured the two of you broke up,” Gabe shrugs. Patrick is about to inform him that there was nothing about them to break — though it’s kind of _totally_ awesome that someone thinks they were a couple — when Gabe continues, frowning thoughtfully at the ugliest, most color-clashing pair of Dunks on display, “since he’s spent the past couple days at Mikey’s place.”

Patrick’s stomach knots, freezes, and threatens to expose the sum total of his ramen-based lunch to any passersby unlucky enough not to make it out of the blast radius. Mikey. Thin, tall, _gorgeous_ Mikey with his marble-carved cheekbones and lanky frame wrapped elegantly around Pete. Mikey-and-Pete. His vision is dimming a little as he staggers back into the display. Andy glares with the fury of a thousand suns but Gabe doesn’t seem to notice.

Pete.

And Mikey.

Patrick has never felt smaller or more unwanted.

Gabe smiles, holds out the box. “Sucks, though. I figured you two seemed pretty happy. I’ll take these in a thirteen, can I use your staff discount?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me! It's my birthday tomorrow, you HAVE to be nice to me. It's - it's the law, or something. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are amazing (seriously, have I mentioned that you guys are just the absolute BEST?)
> 
> Or come talk to me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friend zoned by Pig Latin. It's a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/30264881798/in/dateposted/)

Patrick is unwilling to admit how many hours he spends devoted to the way his phone screen shifts from bright to dim to dark as he stares at a blank text message. It’s enough that he’d be embarrassed to say it out loud if someone did the unthinkable and actually, you know, _asked_.

He tries typing out texts that pretend it never happened (those are, by far, his favorite to type but, by far, the least plausible to send). He tries acknowledging it _did_ and conjuring up forgiveness in the form of an endless loop of ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just so fucking sorry’. But, he has at least a shred or two of pride buried _someplace_ about his person (not a lot of pride, just enough so that he knows he can’t do _that_ ) so he doesn’t send those either.

Finally, he considers self-deprecation, the jokes about it being a while, about last-second nerves when faced with the prospect of Pete’s _actual_ penis finding its way to his _actual_ mouth. Dudes like jokes, right? But, before he can put his name to a dick-joke laden disaster that reads more like a terrible, slightly camped up late-seventies comedy sketch, Pete saves him with seven words and a kiss.

_want to take hemmy for a walk? x_

Patrick recognizes a lifeline when he’s tossed one, seizing it eagerly enough that he damn near breaks his neck struggling into his sneakers. He’s halfway to strapping Dexter into the stroller, hustling him sleep-drunk and roused from his afternoon nap, before he remembers that social etiquette generally dictates that _replies_ are sort of necessary.

Also, he has no idea where, precisely, Pete intends to walk his dog.

_Sounds good! When? Where? xxx_ (Is three kisses overkill? Who the hell is he trying to kid?)

He’s opening the door to the apartment as he hits send, shushing Dexter, juggling keys, considering how best to descend the steps to the sidewalk when he _usually_ doesn’t put the kid into the stroller until they’re ground level. He has nothing but a vague notion of getting to Pete, of walking in the direction of his apartment. He crashes to a halt, keys slipping from his grip and clattering loud enough that Mrs Alverez upstairs is going to complain.

From the bottom step, Pete blinks at him, grey shirt clashing with red skinny jeans and black and gold sneakers. He looks like he got dressed in the dark. Patrick still feels stupid-ugly next to him. Stupid-stupid, too. Stupid squared. Stupid to the power of dumbfuck.

“Now?” Pete says, Byronic hero without the poetry. Eighties movie without the boom box. Patrick’s heart feels just a little too swollen for his chest; his lungs; his desperately diminishing sense of self-esteem. “Is now good?”

Well, now is hardly the time to start playing it cool and pretending he has an elsewhere to be. There’s a text in Pete’s phone that _literally_ has Patrick’s name on it that’s just about desperate enough to call him out. Dexter is making happy, wordless little shrieks as he trades kisses with Hemmy across the bar of his stroller. Patrick smiles, suddenly awkward — _awkwarder_ , there is _nothing_ sudden about his general sense of awkwardness — and points vaguely in the direction of Ken-Well park.

“Swings?” he says, idiotically. Then, like Pete needs additional information from a mouth that apparently just won’t quit, he adds, “Slide?”

“Monkey bars,” Pete nods agreeably, miming each one. “Jungle gym. Horse-thing-on-springs.”

Their shoulders come together companionably, Patrick’s impending panic attack receding as they walk the summer-soft sidewalk together.

“Pete,” Dexter chirps, blowing kisses, “hi, Pete! _Mmwah_!”

Pete holds out his fist solemnly for Dexter to bump, “Little dude,” he says, with a nod that seems very _bruh_ , to Patrick’s untrained eye at least. “Good to see you.”

The way he turns to face the stroller means Patrick can see his shirt. _Harry, is that a wand in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?_ His eyebrows rise.

He asks, “Do you make _all_ your own shirts?”

“Only the very best ones,” Pete grins, all teeth and balled up hamster cheeks with dimples Patrick wants to kiss. Every day. And then he says, “Trick —”

Right in the breath that Patrick says, “Pete —”

The stroller wheels squeak and Hemmy pants, hot-dog-desperate at their knees. Dexter sings Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star all loud and off key and with the wrong words in the wrong places. In fact, most of the words are ‘Pete’. Petey, Petey, Petey star. Patrick gets it, he really does.

“Okay,” Patrick starts, when it becomes apparent that Pete tossed out all of the lifebelts he was intending to throw with his opening text message. “The thing is... I’m kind of. Well. I’m sorry, I guess.”

Pete seems to be concentrating super hard on the way Hemmy’s leash loops over his hands as he murmurs to the sidewalk, “You’re — sorry? For — for which, uh, which _part_ are you... you know, _sorry_?”

It’s painfully obvious that Patrick is balanced on a sea wall with the option of toss himself to the ocean and drown or dash his head open on the rocks. Pete isn’t looking at him (which is _totally cool_ , he’s not looking at Pete either — much. He’s not looking at Pete _much_ ) which makes the room somewhat harder to read. Desperate, Patrick shrugs, thinks cool guy thoughts and says this: “The whole… _thing_ with the, uh, you know…” he pauses, presses his hands over Dexter’s ears and stage-whispers, “the _owblay objay_. Man, was _that_ a ittyshay… uh… ideaway?”

There is no longer an empirical way to record the temperature of Patrick’s face, neck, arms. Every inch of exposed skin is burning, spontaneous human combustion incited by sudden-onset unsurvivable embarrassment.

“I — it was? Oh. Okay. Yeah, it’s, uh — no big deal, right?” Pete blinks, bites his lip. “I mean, I guess I thought maybe things were… But no. No. You’re right, it was — we should probably… Friends, right?”

_Maybe_? He _thought_? What the hell did he _think_? Did he just friendzone Pete with Pig Latin? Oh _God_.

He grips the handles of the stroller tight enough that the rubber reddens the skin of his palms, anything to stop him grabbing Pete by the front of his shirt and shaking him. He’s pretty sure howling demands into the face of the daycare teacher _probably_ isn’t developmentally helpful for Dexter.

So instead, Patrick laughs, bordering on hysterical, the kind of sound that makes his son crane back to stare at him, that makes Hemmy cock his head to the side like Patrick is one of those high frequency training whistles, “Ha ha ha! _Right_! And, I mean, then there’s Mikey. God. _Mikey_ , huh?” he can’t stop, he _wants_ to but he _can’t_ , “ _Mikeyway_ , ha! Get it? Am I right?”

A Pig Latin joke based around Pete’s ex-but-not-boyfriend’s name. Gorgeous. In retrospect, maybe shaking Pete would have been less highkey fucking humiliating.

“Mikey,” Pete repeats, in the kind of tone that suggests he’s considering backing away slowly or, like, removing anything sharp from Patrick’s apartment. “I, uh… _wow_ , you heard about that? I —”

“Yes!” Patrick yelps, freaked, convinced this is the part where Pete indulges in details that Patrick absolutely does _not_ want to hear. “It’s _fine_!”

Patrick feels sick but hides it with a smile as he takes off — close to running — in the direction of the park. Pete trots alongside, Hemmy panting at his heel and taking idle snatches at the soggy tennis ball in his fist.

So, it’s true. _Mikey_. This is why Pete hasn’t been at Lullabye every morning, trading early starts for blowjobs on bedsheets he’ll never share with Patrick. Making promises shaped like a future that doesn’t contain the three of them. A lifetime sounding like Mikey’s name. God, they’ll probably get _married_ , probably adopt a couple kids, maybe another dog, buy a cute little house out in the suburbs…

“Are you okay?” Pete asks, concerned, as they swing into the gates of the park. _Okay_? Sure, aside from the fact that he’s teetering embarrassingly close to hyperventilation. Patrick busies himself unstrapping Dexter and adjusting velcro on tiny shoes. He’s a-okay. Just imagining the man he’s in love with indulging in domestic bliss with a dude with the kind of cheekbones that could be used as offensive weapons. “You seem kind of… is something wrong?”

Dexter has that smell; sunblock and cookie crumbs and bruised knees. Patrick breathes it in as he adjusts the little cap on his tiny head and ushers him along the sidewalk. On his knees, Hemmy’s breath hot and wet against the back of his neck, he tastes the things he wants to say.

_Please don’t be with Mikey._

But Pete, well, he’ll want to know _why_. Patrick suspects _because it makes my tummy hurt when I think about it_ probably isn’t a good enough reason to contort his best friend’s sex-and-or-love-life into something _he_ finds palatable.

(Honestly? There’s no incarnation of Pete’s love life that Patrick can find anything but sickening. Because, Patrick knows, it can never reallytruly involve _him_. Patrick is willing to pretend it’s normal to write songs about the inferiority of his best friend’s boyfriend. Because he’s done that. He’s _done_ that. Dexter kisses him, wet and smacking, smearing slick toddler spit across his cheek. It’s worth it. It’s _totally_ worth it.)

“I’m fine,” he insists, straightening up and punching Pete on the shoulder like a good, heterosexual friend. “Just a little cabin crazy from being pinned indoors with this guy all week,” he lowers his voice, like Dexter is listening in, “between you and me, he is _not_ an engaging conversationalist outside of Barney, cookies and really big fire trucks.”

“Fire trucks!” Dexter squeals, taking his cue. “Nee-naw-nee-naw! Daddy, look! Pete!”

Pete stares at Patrick, Patrick stares, very hard, at Dexter. It means, when Pete drags him into the kind of hug designed to crush ribs, that he’s unprepared in a number of ways that he breaks down like this:

  1. Physically; this is _not_ part of the script, Pete’s arms, his hands, his fucking _body_ moulded to the softness of Patrick’s. Pulse throbbing wethotmessy, he leans his cheek to Pete’s shoulder and takes in the way he moves, of muscle under skin, like he can absorb him through the process of osmosis if he just tries hard enough.
  2. Emotionally; the way his breathing fills Patrick’s lungs, want tacking to oxygen that travels his bloodstream and leaves him weak-kneed and desperate. This could have been his. Another world or place or Patrick-and-Pete. Because he’s sure, as sure as his next breath, that there’s no Patrick in any other universe who isn’t completed, complemented, _bettered_ by any Pete.
  3. Nasally; the tennis ball is, like, _super fucking close_ to Patrick’s nose and it smells like the inside of Hemmy’s mouth. Patrick loves Hemmy, but he eats dog food and spends a _lot_ time licking his own balls. Up until Patrick met Hemmy, he didn’t know what it sounded like to hear someone receiving enthusiastic fellatio two feet from where he’s sitting. It’s _bad_ , is what he’s saying. He gags a little but doesn’t pull away.



“I’ve missed you,” Pete admits, taking confession into the sweaty hair between Patrick’s left ear and the band of his cap. Patrick wraps his arms around Pete’s waist and breathes in cologne that could be designer, could be from Hot Topic. Pete is waiting, like Patrick can, _should_ , grant him absolution. Like he has anything to ask forgiveness _for_. “So much.”

Hemmy licks the back of Patrick’s hand, whining, jumping-desperate to chase his little amigo across the grass scorched by late summer sunshine. Patrick presses his thumbs into the small of Pete’s back and makes three wishes for _this_ to be a possibility. Not forever, not a fairytale. Just… _something_.

“I’ve missed the uckfay out of you, too,” he whispers against the salt of Pete’s earlobe. “Osay uchmay.”

“Oh God, _please stop_ ,” Pete begs, twisting free with a final squeeze and releasing Hemmy as Dexter spins around them in circles. “Hemingway! Fetch!”

Hemmy and Dexter take off running, barking, shrieking, a tumble of pale fur and brightly colored cotton. Pete is grinning like he’s golden, sparkling brighter than sunlight on lake water. _I’m falling for you_. That’s what he said. Patrick wonders what Pete said to Mikey the very next day.

Patrick shields his eyes with the peak of his hat as he watches the tennis ball carve a streak of luminescent yellow across the unending azure of an early-September sky. The thing is, the ball will fall. It has to.

He closes his eyes and pretends that it doesn’t.

*

They’re clicking Duplo blocks together, the three of them, sprawled on the rug in front of the couch as Pete provides the stereo-sound background noise, verbalising each decision, every colour-shape-size choice for each block he plucks from the pile. Pete is building aliens, rocket ships and far away landscapes. Dexter is smashing his toy fire truck into them all with barely repressed glee.

Domestic bliss but not quite. Is it normal to spend quite so much time in the company of another human adult without being on first name terms with their genitals? It’s not that Patrick doesn’t _want_ to be, don’t misunderstand, he really, super _does_ , but Becky was clear and Pete has Mikey and it’s only a matter of time...

Pete isn’t Patrick’s in the way he would like, they’re not the combined contents of dresser drawers, mixed record collections and toothbrushes tucked into the same mug by the sink. But if this is it? If this is what he can have stretched out on the floor of his shitty apartment, then he’ll take it.

“I’m pretty sure you’re having like, just as much fun as he is,” Patrick observes, more for something to say than anything else. “Don’t you get bored after doing this all day at work?”

Pete smiles at Dexter, brushes back a lock of hair from his eyes and really lets the ‘p’ snap against his lips. “Nope.”

Patrick is pretty sure that’s a lie, well-delivered and carefully spoken but a lie nonetheless. “If you wanted to hang out with, uh — you know? — your _actual_ friends, I’d get it.”

“You guys _are_ my _actual friends_.”

Well. Okay then.

Pete continues, “It’s your birthday soon, little guy.” Patrick doesn’t need the reminder, the punch to the gut delivered in the aisles of Toys R Us and faced with a mountain of plastic he tells himself is overpriced even though he knows — God, but he _knows_ — that Dexter would adore every testament to Fisher Price, Little Tikes and Mattel. It’s an admonition, a memorandum, that he can’t be the father he wants to be, the father Dexter deserves. Then Pete says (super casually, like it’s a given), “Are you gonna have a party?”

It’s not the words themselves, but the inflection, the excitement drenching Pete’s tone like syrup that has Dexter bouncing on the sugar high, clapping chubby, damp little hands as he chants, “Party! Party! Party!”

“Maybe this year daddy’ll take you to the zoo,” Patrick offers, false excitement bright in his tone like free admission can make up for the lack of Chuck E. Cheese’s.  “That would be fun, right?”

Dexter, apparently done with Patrick’s shit, throws his Duplo across the room and shouts, “No! Want _party_ , daddy!”

Pete, a terrible person, says, “He wants a party.”

Patrick, the holder of the checking account, replies, “I _know_ he wants a party. You know what? He _also_ wants to be Lightning McQueen when he grows up —”

“ _Kachow_!” squeaks Dexter. “ _Brrrum_!”

“— but life is disappointing. And, _genius_ , birthday parties cost money,” Pete is grinning, that stupid grin that shows all of his teeth, it would probably traumatize Dexter if Patrick slapped him, “and in case you didn’t notice, I work in a sports store and give most of my salary to your boss and my landlord. I do _not_ have the cashflow for parties! I barely have the cashflow for _shoes_ —”

“’Kin _soooos_!” says Dexter.

Pete raises his eyebrows. “Did he just say —”

“ _No_!” Patrick rubs the bridge of his nose, tension headache flooding his temples as he concentrates on breathing deeply and _not_ kicking Pete’s Duplo X-Wing straight at his crotch, “No, he did _not_ ‘just say’! I’ll take you to the zoo, little guy, okay? We’ll — we’ll watch the lions and get ice cream and, like, mommy probably has something fun planned, so… so… don’t worry about, ’kay?”

There’s a silence — awkward, probably — then Dexter waves his clownfish plushie in Pete’s face. (Patrick was entirely correct — it hasn’t left his side once since Pete bought it.) “Look, Pete! ’Emo!”

“He’s having a party,” Pete insists with the kind of authority reserved for parents, not daycare workers, not even dad’s best (only) friend. “You only turn two once, isn’t that right, little guy?”

Patrick tries, one last valiant time, to play the reluctant ringmaster to the three-ring circus of Pete’s overactive imagination. “Pete, I —”

“Can’t afford it, got it,” Pete nods, smiles, all warm and reassuring. Patrick feels reassured not at all. “Leave it to me.”

He’s already sliding his Sidekick from his pocket, whispering conspiracies wrapped in secrets to Dexter over primary colored plastic. Patrick wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him and, as his dad and high school gym teacher would no doubt attest, he doesn’t have much of an arm.

“Pete,” he warns. Pete grins at the screen and nudges Dexter with his toes. “Don’t… just don’t do anything stupid, okay? He’s about to turn _two_ , he’ll forget whatever you come up with when he watches the next episode of Barney.”

“Nothing stupid, gotcha,” Pete mocks a salute then squints at Patrick carefully. “So, you’re a medium, right? Like, generic sizing-wise?”

Patrick chooses not to dignify that with an answer, supposition exchanged for the crash of water into the tub and a wriggling, giggling heap of toddler dumped into water that smells of lavender. (The bottle assures Patrick that the formula will basically induce a coma; the bottle is built on a veneer of _lies_ ). Eventually though, after warm milk and stories and endless creeping footsteps, Dexter’s room is quiet and still.

It’s no longer just daddy time, though. Now it’s like, _dude_ time, sharing shitty beers that Pete pretends he doesn’t hate, watching TV shows Patrick stays awake to see the end of. It’s nice, if not quite enough and he’s lounging back, trying to decide if Michael Hall is cute or not when Pete mutters from the other end of the couch.

“Can I ask you something?” Pete says, separated by cheap Ikea cushions and the shadow of the shape of Mikey’s name.

They still haven’t spoken about it and Patrick sort of gets it. Pete knows Patrick has a crush on him, has taken the mature decision not to hurt him further. But, yeah, it sort of stings to be treated like a child without a birthday party invitation rather than a trusted adult. Rather than a _friend_.

He shrugs, snatching a handful of popcorn from the bowl in Pete’s lap. “You just did, asshole.”

“Whatever,” Pete rolls his eyes and mutes the TV. The room is silent now, the flicker-glow of shadows still painting the walls as Six Feet Under rolls on without them. “I was just, you know, _wondering_... Why is it just you?”

This isn’t a question Patrick wants to answer. So, instead, he plays dumb. “Just me that likes the show? I thought you said –”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Patrick shrugs, so Pete carries on. “You’re twenty-two and living alone with your kid, your ex seems to hate you and I never hear you talk about hanging out with anyone else. You’re – you’re a sweet guy, I just, uh – I just wondered. You don’t have to tell me.”

Patrick would, honestly, rather be struck by lightning than answer that question. His skin still crawls static with shame whenever he thinks about the way things came to an end, his stomach sore at the thought of the friends that turned away because they’d rather believe a lie than ask what the hell went down. This is Pete, though, and in honesty, Patrick isn’t sure there’s anyone in the world that he trusts more. He’s a Linus blanket, warm and safe, the smell of home somehow inexplicably caught in the fabric of his shirt even when he smells of a dozen sweaty toddlers.

“She, uh – I lied to her,” Patrick admits softly. “I, well, I never told her about the, uh – the bi _thing_ and when she – when she found out, she… left.” He pauses and watches the headlights of a passing car track across the living room wall. Pete doesn’t speak, so Patrick does. “I should’ve been honest, I should’ve, like, I should’ve _told_ her but… she said she thought I’d spent two years thinking about fucking guys which is sort of funny because the guy I was with before her thought I’d spent the whole time thinking about fucking girls. God, it’s just so _funny_.”

Pete blinks at him in the stuttering light of the TV, fingers curled around the couch cushion as he opens and closes his mouth silently a couple of times. There’s a dumb sting at the back of Patrick’s eyes, the well of tears that taste of frustration. He presses his thumbs into his eye sockets and breathes deeply. He’s not going to fucking cry right now. That’s, like, right at the top of his list of priorities, right above not telling Pete the rest of the story. What? He’s just going to come out and say that his ex is holding him hostage with his own sexuality? He has self-respect hidden somewhere about his person, thanks.

“That’s – that’s awful.”

“She – she told them I’d cheated on her,” Patrick whispers to the coffee table; it already knows, it heard the fights first hand. “She went around our friends and said she’d caught me in our bed with a girl from her classes while Dexter was napping in his crib in the next room. I – I wanted to argue but, uh, my custody of Dex? It’s not court-appointed. If I rock the boat I think she… I think she’ll take him away.”

“Come on, man,” says Pete softly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t do that.”

“She has the kind of job she could take anywhere and – and I couldn’t – _can’t_ – deal with the thought of her taking him across country.” Pete takes his hand across the cushions, squeezes softly. “And it’s kind of hard to make new friends when you can’t leave the house without a toddler twelve days in fourteen. So, yeah. That’s why it’s just the two of us. And like, that’s _great_ , you know? I — I wouldn’t change it! He’s pretty much the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Pete’s palm is warm, dry against the sweat-slick damp of Patrick’s, the knuckles curving just so against his own. Patrick’s kissed him, tasted the shape of his tongue and teeth, felt the heat kicking from the lust-thick weight of his cock through skin-tight shorts, but this is the first time he’s held Pete’s hand. The quivering compass point of his heart settles into the magnetism of the irrepressible draw to Pete, shuddering tingles too strong to be lust through each burnt-raw nerve ending and into the heavy beat of his battered heart.

“She’s, like, the biggest fucking idiot,” Pete assures him. Like the Grinch, Patrick’s heart grows two sizes, swelling wet and messy in his chest as Pete’s eyes glow amber and gold. “The two of you are pretty much my favourite people.”

God, but Patrick _aches_ to kiss him.

Instead, he barks a laugh. “You sound like my mom. But, you know, she was, uh… a little less potty-mouthed about it. It’s cool, I — you know? In honesty I don’t think she, uh, well, I don’t think she ever _really_ loved me. But Dexter came along and… it was easier to pretend. It’s cool. It’s like, _totally_ fine.”

Patrick’s skin is itchy-hot with shame, the collar of his polo shirt turned up like some kind of douchebag to give him something to hide behind. A presentation of failure as both a man and a father. He gets it. If he was Becky, he’d run too.

Pete is watching him and, like the bastard he is, he’s not even pretending otherwise. Patrick gets why Mikey would go back for more; those eyes, that thick mouth, the tapered line of shoulders to chest to hips. The way he smiles, the way he laughs, the way he feels like home. Patrick has the dive-bar-band cover version, Mikey gets the limited edition EP.  

“None of it’s fine,” Pete insists. He hasn’t let go of Patrick’s hand, stupid tactile, driven by touch. “I wish… I wish you could see what I see when I look at you.”

Patrick smiles, shy and sad. Honestly? He’d like that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always amazing and it's fab hearing what you think.
> 
> Or come talk to me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is always some madness in love...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, welcome back!
> 
> This week's chapter was based on some rather beautiful artwork that @das-verlorene-kind created a few months ago. I didn't want to post it without her permission and I didn't want to give her spoilers but if you follow her on tumblr (and ask really, super nicely) maybe she'll show you it...
> 
> Anyway, on with the clueless dudes in love.
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/44374700612/in/dateposted/)

Patrick hasn’t learnt his lesson about allowing bars to subsidize his fee with free beer. This means that Patrick is drunk. Sort of drunk. The kind of drunk that leaves a warmglow buzz deep in his belly and has him leaning into the mic half out of enthusiasm, half in a desperate bid to remain (mostly) vertical. He’s considering mixing things up with some signature, white dude dance moves.

_That_ kind of drunk.

Things are going well, for tonight at least. Like, no one has thrown anything at him or yelled at him to shut the fuck up, so, with that as his baseline, he’s calling it a success. Buoyed on the unfamiliar confidence of it, Patrick finishes with a flourish, strained up onto his tiptoes for the final, ringing high note and toasts the smattering of applause with the lingering dregs in his bottle of Rolling Rock.

For tonight, at least, Patrick can afford to get a little buzzed. Responsibility is cast aside, secure in the knowledge that Dexter is safely tucked up in Patrick’s childhood bedroom in a house in Glenview, safe under the watchful eye of grandma and the tender care of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sheets. This is a positive because setting an example is no longer a priority. It’s a negative because it means Pete isn’t waiting on Patrick’s couch. He’s probably naked on Mikey’s.

The thought knocks him sick.

So, the crowd seems lukewarm at least and Patrick is trying not to think, shaping his fingers to the frets as he works his hand over the strings. He can’t tell Pete, but he can pour the heartache into the bar, seek validation in the form of the recognition of strangers. It’s the only coping mechanism he’s got which means, by default, it’s the healthiest one available. What’s a man to do when his source of heartbreak is also his confidante? Maybe it’s time to try out something original.

He licks his lips, leans in close to a microphone that smells of hops and malt, and starts to sing, “When I wake up, I’m willing to take my chances on the hope I forget, that you hate him more than you notice I wrote this for you…”

He wrote this for a band he doesn’t have, adapted it on an acoustic that’s slung into his closet at home and now he’s playing it on the crappy Gibson that was falling apart when his dad gave it to him. It sounds all wrong, twisted and disfigured, but fuck it, he’s buzzed and hurting enough that he no longer cares. Each push of air over his lips catches like agony on the almostlikebetrayal he’s been hiding for over a month. He’s the tender expanse of a day-old bruise, sore and ugly and begging for the jab of experimental fingers into the wound-raw pain of it.

It’s inevitable of course, he’s a limited edition, special flavor kind of dumbass for not seeing it coming. But he still chokes on the lines, stuttering-sharp over a love-fucked burst of ‘ _won’t find out_ ’ when his eyes catch on copper across the bar. It’s a gaze he knows as intimately as his own, his voice screeching desperately through several wrong notes before he swallows and plays it through on an instrumental.

Pete.

Pete who isn’t watching Dexter so _of course_ he’s watching Patrick instead. Didn’t he ask? Didn’t he mention he might stop by one of these nights and see what the fuss was about? Patrick is shaded crimson, hot and burning bright as the single spotlight that floods the stage. Can he blame that? Oh God, what if Pete’s here on a _date_? Patrick can play the good friend but so help him, he’s not sure he can watch them kiss, watch them lean into one another, watch them leave together.

Pete is watching him, lip snagged between his teeth and something awfully close to understanding in his eyes. No, no, _no_. Patrick, he can deal with anger, okay? He could understand annoyance or irritation but please — oh fuck, _please_ — he can’t handle _pity_. His fingers twist into all the wrong chords for a moment before he pauses, takes a deep breath and continues, eyes on the floor.

“Where is your man tonight, I hope he is a gentleman,” he can’t see Mikey, thank God, “maybe he won’t find out what I know, you were the last good thing about this part of town.”

He hits the final chord like an exclamation point, slamming away from the microphone to fumble his guitar back into its case. Sure, _technically_ , he’s got another ten minutes but Charlie’s a good guy and Patrick has a half-formed ludicrous excuse about burning orphanages and well-hidden superpowers drunkenly slurring the tip of his tongue. Patrick will do, _say_ , anything to get away from this stage, this bar and maybe the Chicagoland area if it means he doesn’t have to speak to Pete in the next couple minutes. Or lifetimes. This is almost certainly the kind of shit that transcends reincarnation.

The speaker screeches with feedback, a friendly reminder that guitars generally prefer to be unplugged before they’re slammed face down into a case.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hisses, alcohol and heartache apparently the number one causes for public displays of humiliation. “Oh, Jesus fuck, oh _shit_ , Patrick you’re a fucking _dumbass_ , you —”

He sees the shoes first; trashed black converse with hot pink laces blurring into painted on jeans tight to lean thighs. Patrick can’t bring himself to look any higher, he stays, crouched, fiddling miserably — pointlessly — with the frets of his guitar.

“Dude!” says Pete, like nothing happened. Patrick’s still staring at his knees. “Dude, you were like, completely amazing!”

_Don’t tell him you wrote a song about him_ , Patrick’s brain demands. And that’s, like, _stellar_ advice. Really top-notch stuff and all, but, on the other hand…

“I’m sorry I wrote a song about you,” Patrick’s mouth — that traitorous fuck — blurts out insensibly. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

There’s a pause, Patrick’s aware of the way his tongue tingles from too much booze and every blood cell in his body rerouting itself to his face. Then Pete drops down, crouched and peering under the peak of Patrick’s hat. They both reach to straighten the neck of the guitar in the same moment, fingers brushing. Patrick jumps, livewire-shocked as he snatches his hand back and curls his fingers around the body of the case until they cramp.

“I’m—” Pete pulls in a quick breath, thick, dark lashes fluttering for a moment in time with the pound of Patrick’s pulse racing hot against his eardrums, “—you did what now?”

Try as he might, Patrick can’t bring himself to frame the words, can’t do much at all, really, beyond shrugging miserably at the floor as he waits for Pete to slide the pieces into place. He just needs Mikey to join them, to claim the prize Patrick was too scared to reach for, and his evening will be complete.

“Okay, first off,” Pete grins, scuffing his knuckles against Patrick’s jaw. “ _You_ didn’t write Little Red Corvette. Second, my red love machine is _not_ little. It’s — okay, it’s mostly average, but still. I…”

Patrick chokes on the kind of stupid noise that could be a laugh, could be a sob. “Shut up, dumbass. Don’t you get it?”

It would be gorgeous if he could keep his damn mouth shut.

“Wait. That last song?” Pete says, slowly now, like the dots are joining one to another in his mind. “ _Wow…_ That was — about me? _Wow_.” Patrick is of the opinion — if anyone’s asking — that they’re both truly fucking _awful_ at this. “I — _wow_.”

“If you Owen fucking Wilson me _one more time_ , I swear to God, I’ll—”

It turns out it’s hard to issue threats of immediate and graphic violence around a sudden mouthful of tongue. Pete’s tongue. Slippery-soft and wet, like velvet sliding grasping heat along the greedy curve of Patrick’s lower lip. Eyes wide and filled with black-on-red and so much fucking immaculately applied kohl, Patrick enjoys it for a second, a split-atom moment in time before gravity kicks in and he stumbles, graceless, to his knees.

It’s not far to fall but he does it with the kind of flair that draws every eye in the room, snagging the mic stand and scraping his teeth along the stubble-raw stretch of Pete’s chin. He twists, back wrenching fiercely and palms splayed to Pete’s chest, in a desperate bid to avoid an inevitable crash landing on the neck of his guitar. He thinks the peak of his hat drives into Pete’s eye socket (it would explain the yelp) before they land, winded, in the middle of the stage.

Patrick is close to certain that every single person in the bar, neighborhood, and Chicago is staring.

Pete is on his back, legs spread, the heat kicking from him burning through denim like he’s fevered. Patrick is sprawled across him, aware, although unfairly unable to do anything about it, of the mic stand teetering behind him. He’s embarrassed, pained, mortified and flustered, but not at all _shocked_ , when the weight of it connects with the back of his skull. Across the bar, some asshole cheers.

“Ow,” Patrick groans. He’s dry humping his crush wearing the disguise of his best friend in the middle of a fucking _stage_. There’s like, literally _no way_ that this could get any worse.

Proving that there’s either no God, or that there _is_ and He is vengeful, from somewhere above them Mikey asks, “The fuck are you two idiots doing down there?”

“Mikey,” says Patrick, scrambling halfway to his knees and shoving Pete away like he’s diseased. His mouth still tastes a little like Pete’s. “I can explain.” He’s lying. He absolutely can’t. Not in any way that sounds remotely reasonable. “We — _I_ — was just… I’m _sorry,_ okay? But _he_ kissed _me_! I’m like, pretty much totally innocent in this! It was — it was a drive-by smoochin’!”

“Fuck _you_ ,” Pete snaps. “You kissed back, you fucker, I—”

Hard to speak, Patrick notes, with a hand clamped over his mouth. Possibly hard to breathe but that’s not Patrick’s problem.

“ _Riiight_ ,” look at Mikey, standing there like being skinny is a fashion statement (Patrick supposes it probably _is_ , he’s not dwelling on that right now), “based exclusively on the lap dance, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume that the two of you finally resolved,” he waves his hand between the two of them with a vague sense of irritation, “ _this_.”

Patrick is confused. “I… I really don’t… Why aren’t you punching me in the face?” he pauses, adds hurriedly, “Not that I _want_ you to punch me in the face! I’m totally cool with _not_ punching, but… Wait, ‘this’? What _this_? There’s a this?”

“Is he okay? Did that knock to the head do serious damage?”

Patrick is close to certain that this isn’t addressed to him, but Pete’s not allowed to use his mouth for anything that could land them in further trouble. He presses his palm a little tighter to the curve of Pete’s lips, mumbles muffled in sweat-sticky skin.

“I,” Patrick declares, loftily, like he’s _not_ assuming the missionary position in front of a live audience; a literal floor show, “am absolutely _fine_. I’m going to get up now. Uh, you know, _away_ from your boyfriend’s dick. And I just — I just wanted to say,” Pete is licking his palm, slow, swirling twirls of his tongue, it’s disgusting (Patrick doesn’t think he’s ever been more turned on in a public place), “that if the two of you are like, getting married, that’s _totally_ cool with me.”

Patrick and being-totally-cool-with-that are not in the same room. They don’t even share a zip code. Fortunately, before he vomits more humiliating syllables, Pete bites him. Hard.

“Ow! You motherfucker! Who the fuck _bites_ someone—”

“Ugh,” Pete licks over the cuff of his hoodie a few times. Patrick is in _no way_ mortally offended. “Dude, you taste of guitar and fear-sweat. Let me up, would you?” Patrick scrambles to his feet, graceless and blushing. Pete follows lithely, brushing dust from the seat of his jeans. Mikey still hasn’t moved, arms folded over his leather jacket, expression hovering between bored and disinterested. “Just so we’re clear, Mikey is _not_ my boyfriend.”

That’s… not what Patrick was expecting to hear. “He’s, uh — he’s not?”

Mikey grimaces. “Gross.”

“Fuck you,” parries Pete.

“But, Gabe said…” tries Patrick.

“Fucking _Gabe,_ ” say Mikey and Pete in the kind of unison the twins from The Shining would envy.

Pete is fiddling shyly with the zipper of his hoodie, sliding the tag up an inch, down an inch as he rocks back onto his heel and mutters at the floor between them, “I hooked up with Mikey, after we… After the _owblay objay_ , but I,” he glances up, gaze glittering golden through the fall of his messy hair, “I sort of still have a thing for _you_. You don’t _need_ to appreciate in value. I’m — I’m sort of a sucker for you right now, just how you are.”

Mikey makes deep, unflattering gagging noises. “Oh _God_ , knock it _off_. Get a fucking room, would you?”

Patrick’s feeling stupid-giddy and ten-feet-tall of brave as he grins. “Why don’t you come back to my place? Why don’t we talk this out?”

*

They ride the El in sweaty-palmed silence. Patrick grips his guitar case rigidly between both knees and stares out of the window like he can see anything but his own bloodless, wild-eyed face staring back at him. Pete’s head is close to between his knees, eyes on the ground.

Pete seems terrified to touch him, to touch _anything_ but the tanned stretch of his own wrist, plucking at the leather thong he always wears there. Patrick sort of assumed there’d be more kissing.

“You okay?” he asks, close to certain that the entire population of the carriage — of the train — can hear the way his pulse echoes in his ears. “If you’ve changed… If you don’t want to do _this_ ,” again, ‘ _what **this**_?’ queries his stuttering heart, “then we can just…”

Pete takes his hand across the stained-grey stretch of the seat he left between them. Their fingers fit lock and key, squeezing until the knuckles hurt. Patrick doesn’t even think to look for anyone that might know Becky.

“I want,” says Pete simply.

Patrick grins, fiercely bright as sunrise on lake water. “I want, too.”

*

They cross the threshold cautiously. No part of their bodies touch as Patrick waltzes awkwardly around the way Pete ducks to unlace his shoes. He props his guitar case in the hallway, hangs his jacket carefully on the hook. They stare at one another. It’s odd, like Pete is in his friends list, but he hasn’t added Patrick to his Top 8. And Patrick wants that spot, top left, the one that marks him out as special.

“We should talk about this,” says Pete. Patrick agrees, that’s absolutely the mature thing to do. Then, Pete snags the hem of his shirt in both hands, slipping it up and over his head. He stands, bare-chested, dark nipples stiff and tight in the gust of fall air they carried into the building with them. He blinks, hopeful.  Patrick’s heart attempts to both stop and crash through his ribs in the selfsame second. “But like, honestly? I’m not sure I can concentrate on anything you have to say until we deal with _this_.”

_This._

Patrick clears his throat and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He plucks at the hem of his polo shirt and addresses Pete’s left nipple. “Do I have to, like, take _my_ shirt off right away, too? Just, uh, it’s a little chilly and…”

God, Patrick isn’t suave. He bites his lip and resolutely closes his eyes, counts to lucky number three and makes a wish for a do-over. It doesn’t work, obviously, but when he opens them up again Pete’s smiling, stupid-soft and indulgent, crossing the linoleum like he thinks Patrick’s about to make a bolt for the door.

(Patrick’s considered it, but this is his apartment and, realistically, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.)

Pete slides his palm along Patrick’s cheek, scuffing tingles in his wake as he knots his fingers into what little of Patrick’s hair feathers-soft under the edge of his cap. He’s close enough that Patrick can see the way the thick line of his lower lip bleeds into the honey-gold skin of his chin, can see the peppering of barely-there stubble. Pete exhales, drowning Patrick in malt and the warm, soft smell of his mouth. Patrick is lightheaded, dizzy and tipturned, prickled with goosebumps as he waits, waits, waits…

“Is this okay?” Pete asks uncertainly, head tilted, amber eyes glowing ancient in the shutter-stop flicker of the faulty streetlight just outside. “Patrick please, I — I can’t have this be like the other times.”

It won’t, can’t, could never be. Patrick’s thumb catches on the curve of Pete’s cheekbone, skating soft along the arch of it, flowing into the way his ear shapes under Patrick’s fingertips. “We’ll figure it out,” Patrick assures him, means it, “I promise.”

Patrick kisses desperate. He seizes the soft, damp flush of Pete’s mouth with his own and plunders like the heat in his veins is fatalistic and the antidote rests beneath Pete’s tongue. He grips into the caramel sweetness of Pete’s hips, thumbs scoring adulation into the taut maleness of his exposed hip bones. The touch of his lips is hungry, Pete’s mouth close to edible under each decadent swipe of his tongue.

Patrick sinks his fingers into the plastic press of Pete’s pyramid belt, hauling him by the Superman buckle towards the living room. They trip on toys, on discarded shoes and one another, the room rising and falling with fevered breathing, slick, wet lips and the galloping gait of Patrick’s fucked-raw heart.

They tumble to the couch like ruins collapsing, Patrick first, slipping over the armrest to land sprawled and dangerous amongst the pillows. Pete tops him, hot skin and warm lips, plundering the depths of Patrick’s mouth. Patrick groans, he wriggles around the persistent hardness of his throbbing, aching erection, he sucks at the clever tip of Pete’s talented tongue and arches up to gain as much physical contact as he can with the length of Pete’s body. It’s like a battle. Like claiming territory.

Pete’s thighs bracket Patrick’s, hot and lean and tense, his hand hasn’t left the base of Patrick’s skull, twisted into his hair, tugging sensation into the tips of the strands against the tender pull of his scalp. His own hard cock thrusts back against Patrick’s, the heat of it fit to burn through the front of their jeans. Patrick is going to go insane if he doesn’t get some friction, if he doesn’t relieve the agonizing pressure of his pants, shorts, zipper.

Pete grinds down and — for a moment, a beat of his heart — Patrick thinks this could be it, the culmination of all human sensation. This very second and the glorious weight of Pete’s denim clad ass against his cock. Then, _then_ , Pete’s mouth finds Patrick’s throat, finds the spot where his pulse pools by his collarbone and sucks. Patrick is forced to conclude that each moment, each second, is likely to replace the last as the most erotic moment of his life. Patrick is stiff, every inch of his body, his skin, his lust-pulsed prick pulled taut and tight as a burn wound, pathetic, needy, _embarrassing_ little whines huffing greedy into the shell of Pete’s ear.

“I want,” he says it this time, clawing divots of crimson into the honeyed planes of Pete’s back, carving possession along the valley of his spine. Pete’s pinching at his nipples through his shirt, teasing them stiff and sensitive under the cotton and Patrick may die from the pressure. “I _want_.”

And Pete, he smiles, teeth catching, reflecting, amplifying the way the streetlights slant in through the window, as he whispers, devilish, “I know. I _know_.”

As Pete kneels above him, hand braced to Patrick’s chest, and thumbs open his jeans, as he pulls out the heavy musk weight of his veined-stiff cock, Patrick decides to give up on speaking entirely. He makes a comparison — can’t help it, guy thing — notes his own is bigger, thicker then remembers that it doesn’t matter. He wants to taste, wants to feel the smooth slide of hot flesh over his lips, his tongue. He wants to stain his mouth with the taste of Pete’s precome, to fill his nose with the smell of salt-sweat and sex. Swallowing the sudden excess of spit welling thick under his tongue, he shoves Pete back, knocks him to his ass on the couch and slides to his knees between Pete’s.

Pete’s cock curves up between them, jutting proud and fierce and blood-dark. The tip shines pearl in the low light, leaking like he’s on tap. Patrick hasn’t sucked dick since Will, but he’s watched. Oh God, he’s glutted himself on videos of boys like him on their knees for guys like Pete. He curls a hand around the satin smoothness of Pete’s swollen prick, brushes his thumb through dark curls and leans in.

He keeps his eyes open as he takes the tender tip into the pillowy softness of his mouth. He luxuriates in the hiss bitten off by those big, white teeth above him. Pete sags and straightens all at once, crowding forward like he’ll beg for more then pulling back like he wants it to last. Patrick tastes, salt blooming sharp on the tip of his tongue as he feels his way along the slit by mouth alone.

Pete is gentle, reverent, cupping his face in both hands and watching with the intensity of a first time. (Patrick isn’t naive enough to assume that Pete’s never had his dick sucked before, but this is the first time _Patrick_ is doing it. The importance, the _preponderance_ , of this feels significant). He slides lower, inch by glorious inch, sucking wetly down the length of him until his lips bump his fist and the crown of Pete’s cock nudges at the dangerous point of Patrick’s gag reflex.

He slides a clumsy rhythm back to the tip, sucking sloppily on the ridged cap, tongue soft and wet along the nerve-bright flush of it. Patrick is kicking out of his jeans without thinking about it, sneakers discarded, belt shoved aside and palm cupping the aching strain of his own cock through the cotton of his shorts. Patrick’s not confident, but if Pete keeps looking at him like that, just like that, eyes half-hooded and lip bitten white like he can’t control himself, then Patrick can lose himself in the reflection of it.

They find their pace together, the roll of Pete’s hips smooth, the slide of Patrick’s mouth greedy. He knows he’s sucking cock like he’s starving for it, desperate for Pete, like he’ll drain him of every drop and still crave more. He thinks he’s still wearing his hat but, from the careful way Pete smooths his hands up into his hair, fingers sliding just beneath the band, Patrick thinks Pete might be into it.

Pete groans, urging Patrick back from the spit-slick, throbbing red length of his straining erection. Patrick would feel slighted, cheated, but once he’s urged into Pete’s lap, once the heat and hardness aching between them can nudge and rub and throb in oneness, he loses the ability to frame his objections. Pete reaches for the hem of Patrick’s shirt, reclining against the couch cushions like a study in everything Patrick’s ever fantasized about.

Look at him, stretched out like a panther, all ink and skin and toned, taut tightness. Patrick can’t — _he can’t_ — sit here in light clear enough to see by and slip out of his shirt. He can’t expose the softened roundness of his stomach that’s only gotten worse since Becky left, the lack of definition in abs and pectorals, the way his collar and hip bones resolutely refuse to show themselves. They’re like, definitely _there_ , Patrick can _feel_ them, but… He shakes his head, embarrassment burning through him.

Pete smiles, like he gets it, and gently eases up the hem of Patrick’s shirt, tucking it between his teeth, exposing the greedy jut of his cock under cotton but leaving him mostly covered up. And before Patrick can allow insecurity to have him lunging to yank it back down, Pete is snagging his thumbs in the waist of Patrick’s shorts, huffing soft, interested little groans as he toys with the give of them.

Oh God, _yes_ , Patrick nods like refusal is a disease, like he’ll die from the suggestion of Pete _not_ seeing, touching, stroking his cock. Pete brings their foreheads together, awkward and cramped under the peak of the hat he’s still somehow wearing, his eyes burning molten copper into Patrick’s as he eases down the cotton, carefully ensuring he doesn’t snag on the nerve-blown sensitivity of Patrick’s lust-leaking cock. He rests it, gentle, under the tight tuck of Patrick’s balls, caresses skin and nerves through red-gold curls and then, biting his lip, he looks down.

Pete whines, thin, high, needy, right up in the top of his range. From here, Patrick can smell the tang of his hair product, see the way the muscles in his shoulders cord and contract under the pale stretch of Patrick’s palms. He can watch the way Pete’s hand looks, gold-gilt and long-fingered, as he takes the pink flush of Patrick’s cock into his hand.

Everything in Patrick, every nerve and cell and fuck-burnt neuron melts. It leaks and it drips and it pools to a throbbing core at his groin, driving heat through his veins and into the depths of his lungs as he tips back his head and bites the moan into his lower lip. Then he remembers; they’re alone and unsupervised and fuck Mrs Alverez, his throat aching sore with the cry torn from him by the upstroke of Pete’s rough palm to his cock.

The shirt falls from his teeth, forgotten. He’s stroking Pete, unaware of when he started, timing the pull of spit-tacky skin to the rub of Pete’s hand to his cock. It’s like high school, like back seats and movie theatres, kisses bitten to sweat damp throats as sensation bolts through each blood vessel and leaves Patrick’s skin burn-sensitive and stinging.

Pete stops and objections stutter the tip of Patrick’s tongue, his hand squeezing sharp around the proud rise of Pete’s cock. Then Pete is pressing his intentions into the curve of Patrick’s hips, hauling him close, rubbing the hard heat of their dicks together between their stomachs. Oh yeah, Patrick gets it, thrusts up against Pete’s stomach, against his cock. He twists and he rubs desperate, aware of the way his pink-flushed prick is leaking sticky against the ink low on Pete’s groin. He wants it stained, wants to mark the tattoo with the spurt of his come.

Patrick’s breath is stuttering, forced from his lungs with each rigid, jarring thrust of his hips against Pete’s. He’s rutting, close to agonized in the way his cock pulses between them, and sinks his teeth into a tendon at the tender place where Pete’s neck joins his shoulder. Pete tastes of salt, matches the tang still coating Patrick’s tongue. Patrick can smell _them_ , the leak of their hard dicks between warm bodies, the musky earthiness of it.

Patrick wants and Patrick needs and Patrick is sofucking _close_.

“Gonna...” Pete whispers, breathless and breaking, the first word to fall from his fuck-flushed lips since they fell to the couch. “Gonna...” He tenses, locks up tight through every sinuous inch of himself, arches his back and paints the space between them white and sticky. “Fuck!”

And Patrick kisses him. He kisses with his hands bunched in fistfuls of Pete’s hair, with his teeth cutting bruises to Pete’s lower lip. He kisses an assault as Pete presses in, arches up and grinds the sticky-wet length of his cock against Patrick’s. Chafed and rubbed and ruined, thighs bruised sore from the angles of Pete’s hip bones, Patrick presses down into the thick, wet mess on their stomachs and lets go.

It burns. It aches through every muscle and nerve ending and turns Patrick’s vision to a blur, his blood to boiling, his body to a pulsing, throbbing link of unending circuits chasing electric shocks from his scalp to his toes to the nerve-bright cap of his wound-raw cock. There’s skin under his nails, the thick flush of Pete’s lower lip between his teeth. Patrick comes endless, infinite and scarring the air with the ringing declaration of his completion.

When it’s over, Patrick slumps, boneless, into the curve of Pete’s shoulder. His thighs are wet with (His? Pete’s? _Their_?) come, shirt spotted damp with it too, the sticky musk mess slicking thick and slippery between them. Pete is nibbling at his neck, sparking sensation that makes his cock twinge heroically. It’s been a while, okay? He can probably be good to go again in five minutes or less. Pete strokes his hair, rubs his back, bruises kisses to his mouth.

“Come to bed,” says Patrick, like his voice isn’t trembling. Pete pulls back to look at him, to push sweat-damp hair from his eyes with heavy, dark brows raised. “Not for _that_ , pervert. I — I’m not sure I’m… Uh, it’s a moot point because, uh, the last person I fucked was like, pregnant and self-lubricating, so…” Why? Why is he saying these things? Why is his mouth _still_ making these awful, awkward sounds? “I don’t have any, uh, _protection_ or, you know, uh, lubricant, is what I’m—”

Pete laughs, cuffing his knuckles gently against the side of Patrick’s head. “Dude, _stop_. I’ll stay, no funny business, you have my word,” he holds his fingers up in a twisted approximation of a scout’s salute. “Are we…?”

“Going steady?” Patrick resolves to toss himself from the nearest window, unsure of why he chose to make himself sound like a member of the Brady Brunch.

“I mean, I think I have an old letterman jacket at my mom’s house,” Pete grins, Patrick may kiss him, may punch him, the jury is currently out. “I could probably find my class ring, if you want that?”

“Fuck you, asshole.”

Tomorrow is for panic, Patrick decides, leaning into the way Pete’s chest vibrates with his ugly laugh. Tomorrow is for details and matching up the way the lines blur together. Tomorrow is for his stammering pulse and sweating palms and avoiding the way Becky will look at him like she knows what he’s done. Tonight is for this, for newness, for safety and warmth blooming bright in his chest.

Tonight is for them.

*

“So...” Pete asks from the opposite side of Patrick’s pillow. “Do we talk about this?”

It’s kind of a stupid concept, Patrick thinks, throwing up supposition eight hours and like, _at least_ as many orgasms past when they possibly had a hope in Hell of altering this. _This_. This written-in-the-stars, God-given course plotted out for them; a romance movie, a novel, a fucking _fairytale_ all wrapped up in myth. Patrick bunches the pillow under his cheek and grazes his fingertips over the glorious line of Pete’s pectorals.

He smiles. It feels crooked, higher at one side and showing a hint of teeth but nothing else as he plays dumb. “About what?”

“About if you’re still okay with it — with _me_ ,” Pete shifts closer as he speaks and — oh _God_ — nuzzles his lips into the curve of Patrick’s sweat-damp throat. There’s a wet patch under Patrick’s hip, that curious place that’s not quite cool but not quite body temperature. Patrick doesn’t know whose come it is, doesn’t care much for the semantics of it. “You — you’re sort of due a pumpkin moment, Paterella.”

Ah. Good to know Pete is thinking in fiction, too. Bad to know the exact details. Patrick huffs a sigh and tugs his fingers through the fuck-trashed mess of Pete’s hair. “It’s not like that. And anyway, Cinderella didn’t turn into a pumpkin, her carriage did.”

“You never told me how it is,” Pete counters, ignoring deflection dressed up in Patrick’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Grimm brothers work and, yeah, that’s fair. Not fair enough that Patrick’s going to hand over the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But fair.

“I know,” he agrees. Dawn is fingering through the curtains, painting patterns on the way Pete’s cheekbones arch. He’s so burningly beautiful, Patrick half expects his fingers to scorch and blacken with it as he touches him. Pete’s something ethereal and Patrick’s… not. “But this is,” he pauses, thinks, Pete’s smiling at him, goofy-soft at the edges from not enough sleep and too much burnt-bright friction against his cock, “ _not_ temporary.”

“Not temporary?” Pete repeats, still grinning. Patrick feels carbonated, fizzing down into his fingers and toes. If this is a John Hughes movie then he’s won. He’s Jake goddamn Ryan instead of The Geek. Pete’s eyes crinkle at the corners — he’s going to get the most delicious crow’s feet in a few years — his teeth snagging into the thick, wet heat of his lower lip. “I’ll take that.”

Pete takes his hand, rubs his thumb over the webbing of Patrick’s.

“The fucking daycare teacher,” Patrick says to the ceiling fan. “Could we have been any more clichéd?”

Pete laughs, smelling of stale mornings and the last load from Patrick’s fucked-raw cock that made its way down his throat, across his chin, streaked to his cheek. “The hot dad. Hey, when do I get to meet your kid? I hear that’s something you shouldn’t do right away, it’s like, developmentally inappropriate if you just throw some random dude into his life.”

“Fuck you, asshole, you’re not funny…”

Pete curls into his side, sliding the length of his hard cock up against Patrick’s hip, dull red, slick-shiny at the head. The sheets are tented over Patrick’s own sleepy-warm morning erection. They’ve created a pocket of heat under the covers, the early morning chill of the apartment appealing to neither of them. Patrick is thinking in love songs about the way Pete’s eyes shade amber and gold, poetry posed in the sharp, angular way his jaw meets his chin. Patrick could kiss the depths of his dimples for hours, learn the way his ribs curve just from the feel of his mouth.

“We’ll be okay?” he asks the length of Pete’s cock, fingers fitted to the lust-flushed flare of it. He slicks his thumb through the sticky mess at the tip and catalogs the way Pete moans for him. “Like, you think this can work?”

He doesn’t get a reply for the longest time, Pete’s mouth entirely occupied by the way his nipples sit, swollen and pink, in the red-gold catch of his chest hair. It’s more than this, please understand, it’s not the reductive notion of the long, slow pull of Patrick’s cock against the wrap of Pete’s fist, tongue, thighs. But. But this love song of their own creation, scored in touch and tenderness, it’s important too.

Finally, Pete’s mouth finds the shell of Patrick’s ear, teeth tugging tingles into the lobe as he whispers. “We will. It can.”

If Patrick ignores the guilty way his stomach flips, if he pretends it’s just the two of them plus Dexter, it almost seems like it can be true. There’s a shadow shaped like Becky in every corner of the room. He ignores them.

Pete slides a hand around Patrick’s dick, wet-slippery at the head against his palm, and tests the weight of it in his hand. It’s holy, worship breathed in the way the back of Pete’s knuckles graze the soft swell of Patrick’s stomach.

“I love you,” Pete whispers against the sweaty skin of Patrick’s shoulder.

Patrick kisses him, deepwetslow, then pulls back to murmur against the soft heat of his lips. “Yeah. I — I love you, too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again for reading.
> 
> It would be lovely to hear what you think. Comments, kudos, or pop by tumblr and say hi @sn1tchesandtalkers.
> 
> See you next time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is many things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, welcome back! Hope you’ve all had a good week, especially those of you who were at Wrigley last night!
> 
> So, last week these two dolts finally admitted how they felt about one another... The only way is up, right?
> 
>  
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/29639259917/in/dateposted/)  
> 

“I want you to know,” says Patrick, heartfelt and sincere. “That I hate you with pretty much every single fiber of my being right now.”

The community centre ricochets with the sound of pre-school shrieking. There’s a kid _on_ the cake table and another scaling the curtains of the stage up front like he’s Johnny Depp and this is some gritty, toddler-themed Pirates of the Caribbean reboot. Dexter is somewhere in the melee, squealing furiously on the ship-shaped bounce house in the center of the room, tricorn hat long-gone and eyeliner moustache smeared sticky with juice and cupcake frosting.

“That’s unkind,” Pete informs him, adjusting the buckle on his belt. “Why would you say such awful, hurtful things?”

Patrick has a list. It involves almost-like-surprise parties that Patrick had forgotten about entirely in the Toys R Us induced madness of preparing for his kid’s birthday. It contains neatly labeled packages on kitchen counters. There’s a definite reference to the knowing smirk that curved his boyfriend’s — his _boyfriend’s_ — mouth as Patrick unwrapped it with the dubious care of a SWAT officer. There are many reasons he dislikes him right now. Instead, he whines this: “Because I look like an idiot.”

“You look _great_ ,” Pete waves an airy hand. He casts a cautious glance in the direction of kids clustering for juice boxes and lowers his voice. “ _Very_ sexy.”

In blue and white striped polyester that sticks to every soft round of untoned midsection, Patrick is violently inclined to disagree.

“No, _you_ look sexy,” he mutters, and Pete _does_ , gold hoop earrings shoved through piercings he insisted were _probably_ healed, shirt lacing undone to reveal that delicious, indelible slash of looping thorns, _breeches_ hugging tight to soccer-toned thighs. God, but Patrick feels faint just thinking about it. “Like, objectively speaking, out of the two of us, _you’re_ the sexy one. _You_ look like Orlando Bloom. _I_ look like — like Mr fucking _Smee_!”

“You’ve gotta leave it on for later…” Patrick suspects that Pete thinks his soft snort of a giggle is endearing. Pete is entirely, utterly wrong. Any snappy retort is stolen by Pete plunging into the fray, foam sword held aloft as squealing preschoolers scatter in his wake. “Avast me hearties! It be time fer you to walk th’ plank!”

The world feels as though it’s expanding around Patrick once more. Maybe not as far as California, as New York, but not as claustrophobically close as Hermosa and converted duplex apartment buildings with half-empty double beds. There’s the hint of a possibility of something beyond Duplo blocks and loneliness. Patrick feels the twist of something warm in his gut as Pete grins at him from the bounce house.

“So, you and Pete.” A red solo cup of strictly non-alcoholic punch is pressed into his hand and, oh yeah, Patrick remembers the whole _dad_ thing. His mom smiles at him, the shape of her lips the same as his, the same as Dexter’s. “Just friends, right? Nothing going on there _at all_?”

Patrick, like all adult sons faced with their _mother_ prying into their love life, pulls a face somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “Gross, mom. Where’s your costume?”

She’s wearing a sweater and sensible pants. Patrick and Pete are the only adults in the room in costumes he’s pretty sure shouldn’t go anywhere near the birthday candles. The other parents — mostly moms in jeans, a few dads in polo shirts and chino pants — gather at the punch jug. Patrick feels corny, sure, a little cheesy in his striped shirt and shredded pants but this is a soiree organised by Pete Wentz. He considers himself lucky that Pete didn’t stage an armada in his mom’s swimming pool.

“Dexter likes him,” she says. This is undeniably true. Dexter is currently leading a toddler-shaped battle offensive, burying Pete in the fray. Pete screams something about mutiny, lost in the shove of Dexter’s socked foot into his mouth. Patrick’s stomach feels strange; half-melted-ice-cream-soft as he smiles, silly. “And so do you.”

Patrick doesn’t want to discuss whatever it is he has going with Pete with his mom in the middle of his son’s second birthday party. Then, Patrick doesn’t have a lot of other people he _can_ talk it over with. “He’s… He means a lot to me. But Becky…”

He leaves it unsaid. His mom doesn’t know the specifics but could probably guess.

“Becky isn’t the cornerstone of your life anymore,” she generously refrains from adding _she never was_ , “I’m just saying, sweetheart. It seems as though he’s making you happy. It’s been a long time since you’ve been happy.”

That, Patrick can concede, is true. He nods thoughtfully and swallows a mouthful of punch. He even _maybe_ starts to think about confiding some of the finer details, seeking maternal advice about how to make this work around the puzzle pieces of two guys and a toddler.  Then, his mom does the unthinkable and carries on talking, horrible, awkward syllables spilling from her mom-mouth that he doesn’t want to hear.

“But, um, if the two of you are,” she drops her voice to a theatrical whisper-shout that he’s entirely sure is audible to the parents at the other side of the room, the community center at large and, probably, the residents of _Milwaukee_ , “knockin’ boots, I hope you’re using protection—”

“ _Mom_!” This is it. This is the moment that Patrick dies, bursts into flames in his stupid pirate costume — just to really add the cherry to the top of his humiliation — whilst receiving the Safe Gay Sex Talk from his mom, in front of his _kid_ , at the age of twenty-two. The eulogy is going to be _gorgeous_. “Would you knock it off!”

“I’m just saying,” she won’t stop, carried on a tide of parental self-righteousness that, Patrick swears, he will _never_ inflict on his son, “I know you can’t get him pregnant but there’s... well, there’s _diseases_. Syphilis. Herpes. Gonorrhea.”

Patrick will trade his guitar, his David Bowie LPs, his actual _soul_ to never hear his _mother_ say _gonorrhea_ ever again. He wonders if it’s like, _at all_ feasible to drown himself in the two inches of Hawaiian Punch at the bottom of his cup. “Oh _God_. Why are you _saying_ these things? Could you _stop_?”

“I’m only looking out for you,” apparently no, she can _not_ stop, “you can’t always tell just by looking at a — a _penis_ ,” and she hiss-screams this with exactly the same lack of basic volume control as before, “if it’s, you know, _clean_. And I’d really—”

“ _Mom_!” Patrick cuts her off desperately. His whole face is _hurting_ from the blush. There’s a very real possibility that he’ll go blind from the sudden overload on each of his facial blood vessels. He’s run out of the kind of desperate vocabulary required to stop his _mother_ from reeling off bad-touch body parts in the middle of the GAP Community Center. “I swear to God, I will _die_ if you don’t stop.”

The thing is, Patrick hasn’t got within grinding distance of Pete’s — deep breath — _penis_ since that first night. Pete treats him like he’s fragile, inducing the kind of makeout sessions that turn Patrick’s bones to liquid (and _boner_ to solid steel) only to jolt away when Patrick reaches for him. Guilty eyes and a crooked smile, Pete’s been palming at the stiff length of his cock, trying to smooth it out like a rumpled blanket. Then he’s found something pointless to talk about, some cheap distraction like they’re _not_ both nursing throbbing erections in the confines of their jeans.

If the acute discomfiture induced by his mother using the words ‘penis’ and ‘Pete’ in the same sentence doesn’t kill him, Patrick’s pretty sure the blue balls will finish the job.

Patricia Stump, scourge of Patrick’s sex life, considers him from across the rim of her own bright red cup. “Be careful.”

“Don’t worry,” Patrick assures her, convinced that he will _never ever_ have sex _ever again_ after that little interlude, “I’ll be _fine_.”

*

Patrick considers himself to be entirely in control of the situation. But then, Patrick is exponentially accustomed to lying to himself with the kind of regularity that some might refer to as less a passing habit and more of a compulsion. Realistically – Patrick knows – _realistically_ , he lost control of this particular freight train right about the time he shuffled into the drugstore and told the toes of his converse that he’d quite like a pack of twelve Trojans from the glass cabinet that held the razor blades and Nyquil.

(Thankfully, the apathetic teenager behind the counter was fluent in hot-cheeked mumbling and slid the pack across the counter in exchange for a warm, damp ten pulled from Patrick’s hip pocket. A testament to the Chicago school system and impeccable parenting, he didn’t even snicker when Patrick pushed the bottle of Astroglide towards him as an afterthought, accompanied by his good friend Abraham Lincoln. Patrick still prickles, blushbright and burning, whenever he has the misfortune of thinking about it.)

So, Patrick has thought about this. He has protection. He has lubrication. He has a cock that hasn’t been touched in two weeks and a supposed _boyfriend_ flipping through DVD cases from the far side of the couch like he’ll pass out if he doesn’t provide adequate distraction from the sex-shaped elephant that has moved from the corner of the room and set itself squarely between them on the couch. Patrick takes a breath and prepares to speak then immediately holds it when Pete beats him to the punch.

“Okay,” he says, fanning out cases like playing cards, “we’ve got Rushmore, always a classic, Van Wilder, because Ryan Reynolds and, our outlier for the evening, Ginger Snaps. Now, I know you’re gonna say Rushmore on instinct but like, think seriously about Ginger Snaps, I feel it’s got real potential…”

Patrick can’t take this anymore. Not for another minutesecondheartbeat. He’s definitely going to pass out if he doesn’t let go of that breath he’s holding on to, all wrapped around the sentences he _wants_ to say. He can do this. Delicately.

Patrick opens his mouth and this comes tumbling out: “We should go to bed.”

Pete stares at him, amber eyes very round and his mouth opening and closing without any actual sound coming out. For a moment, Patrick thinks he can see the future. Patrick can see Pete finding a dozen different ways to say no without actually _saying no_ , he’s going to find an excuse to leave the apartment and Patrick is going to have to leave the state, buy a moose farm in North Dakota and raise Dexter away from things like cable TV and human interaction.

Thankfully, Pete seems to regain his motor control and his vocal cords in the second before Patrick starts checking out Craigslist for rural want ads. “I – right now?”

“Well,” Patrick wants to point out that no, he didn’t mean three weeks fucking _hence_ but he’s going for a seductive vibe here, “if you wanted to. I do! Uh… want to, that is. I know you’ve been like, _avoiding_ it for the past couple weeks but… So, uh…. It’s totally cool, I – I bought,” he drops to the same theatrical hiss his mom unleashed in the community center, contemplates the likelihood of it being hereditary and then immediately resolves not to think about his _mother_ for the foreseeable future, " _condoms_.”

Pete blinks at him.

“And lubricant,” he adds hopefully.  

He immediately wonders if it’s possible to walk himself to the post office down on West Grand, climb into a packing box and mail himself to like, Tibet or something. The exact location doesn’t matter. The fact that Pete won’t be there is key. Still, his complete lack of suave sophistication has got him this far and, presumably, Pete’s at least passably okay with his perpetual awkwardness. He smiles winningly.

Content to play a strange version of pong in which his eyes bounce frantically between Pete’s eyes and lips until he’s swirled dizzy on the way his vision shades from soft pink to rich coppergold, Patrick keeps right on holding his breath. There’s maybe three feet between them, comprised of red and blue stripes of faded dralon. Either of them could cover it with a decent lunge.

“That’s not,” Pete begins, fiddling with the zipper of his hoodie, “the reason that we haven’t slept together yet.”

“Safe sex is important,” Patrick counters because, _hello_ , it _totally_ is.

“Agreed,” Pete nods sagely. Patrick wonders if something has passed him by entirely and they’re still discussing movie choices and not the way his cock is twitching in his pants at the thought of getting Pete out of those painted-on jeans. “But I was actually… I wanted to know you were ready. Like, for realsies.”

“Did you just say _for realsies_? Unironically?” Patrick asks, then remembers that there are more pressing issues at hand. “But yes! I’m – I’m ready. I’m _totally_ dee tee eff, man. Can – can we… Can I…?” He leans closer, Pete leans closer, their mouths are now… very close. “Can I kiss you? _For realsies_?”

Patrick pauses, out of breath and out of vague notions that might persuade Pete to climb into his underwear. Pete’s breath is still scented faintly with frosting. It’s just _sex_ , he reminds himself with an unconvincing attempt at conviction, it’s not like it _matters_ if Pete doesn’t want to sleep with him.

(Oh God. It _matters_. It matters _so much_ that Patrick thinks he might die if Pete doesn’t want to.)

“Shut up,” Pete murmurs, apparently miraculously unamused by the fact Patrick just _verbalized_ DTF, “and kiss me.”

Pete’s hands are impossibly warm against the curve of Patrick’s cheeks, calloused fingertips scoring sensation against his temples as their mouths touch. It’s hesitant to start, held back in ways it hasn’t been before. Pete would stop, without question or hesitation, if Patrick were to express even a second of momentary uncertainty. So, _obviously_ , Patrick makes sure that this isn’t even a passing possibility and hurls himself into the way Pete’s mouth slicks hot and messy against his own.

He can taste sticky-sweet energy drinks on Pete’s lips, the neat little teardrop in the center of his top lip that matches the shape of the tab on the open can of Red Bull on the coffee table. He licks over it, and into Pete’s mouth, claims the taste and the way it merges with the flavor of Pete’s tongue.

Things progress quickly after that.

They fight Pete’s hoodie, the last offensive barrier between whatever this is and what it could yet become, snatching at handfuls of cotton and snagging fingers on the sharp ridgebump of the zipper. Patrick feels it scrape the skin from the knuckles of his left hand and swears quietly into the cavern of Pete’s mouth. Pete drops the solid weight of his peach of an ass onto the half-hard length of Patrick’s cock and he swears again, louder this time.

“Fuck!”

Pete grins, crooked. His teeth are very white in the flickerglow of the TV screen. “Working on it.”

Then, Pete removes his shirt. Patrick’s brain softens in direct correlation with his cock hardening, a quadratic function of spiraling desire. It digs, hard and unavoidable, into the zipper of his jeans, begging sore for attention as he licks dry lips and traces his thumb around the stiff, dark bud of Pete’s right nipple. His thoughts are static, humming grey and black and speckled white, hissing background noise overwhelmed by the way Pete presses into his touch.

Patrick whispers, “I – I want…”

Pete slides to his feet and takes his hand, tugs him upright and dizzy on the misfiring relocation of blood ricocheting around his vascular system. He follows, unresisting, utterly eager, as they cross the no man’s land of the hallway, the final frontier that stands between living room and bedroom. They pause at the door.

“You want?” asks Pete, head inclined towards the bed.

Patrick nods, his smile aching sore into the corners of his bedeviled heart. “I _so_ want.”

It’s a funny thing, Patrick thinks, the human craving to exchange body heat in blissful, burning friction. He allows Pete to walk him backwards, to trip over shoes and the corner of the rug until he thumps down to the mattress, legs spread. Pete slips to his knees between them, amber eyes glowing endless in the dim light shafting through the unclosed curtains.

He asks permission with the brush of his mouth to Patrick’s, the way his tongue slides a trail along his pulse, wethotmessy, in the hollow of his throat. This time, when he reaches for the hem of Patrick’s shirt, it seems unimaginable, ridiculous, utterly incomprehensible to stop him. Instead, he raises his arms, feels the heat of Pete’s mouth, his lips, his teeth, his hot, wet tongue against the soft expanse of cream-pale skin and red-gold hair.

The shirt hits the floor, Patrick’s hat knocked back to the bed with it, his glasses half-on, half-off the bridge of his nose and blurring his vision to bizarre, kaleidoscope fuzz. He sinks his fingernails into the perfect firmness of Pete’s flexing shoulders and refuses to look away as Pete drops lower, mouths filthy intent where Patrick’s belt meets the soft swell of his hips, his belly, the coppered trail of coarse hair curling down into his jeans.

He slips down Patrick’s zipper slowly enough to give rise to the panickedglorious realization that _this is it,_  his first blowjob in three years. That’s… sort of depressing, actually. But, no. No, this is _awesome_. Patrick sinks his fingers into the length of Pete’s bangs, pushes them back out of his eyes and takes a breath that shudders through each tingling blood cell as Pete thumbs open the button of his jeans.

Patrick holds that breath until it burns, until it’s rushed from his lungs with the clever way Pete’s hand shapes his cock through his shorts. He hisses, Pete’s lips brushing sticky heat against the damp, dark patch that sits — a treasure map, X marks the spot — right at the nerve-bold tenderness of the tip of his leaking prick.

Pete eases his cock free, sighs and traces the ticklish pad of his calloused thumb along the thick, dark vein mapping the underside.

Patrick waits. Every nerve ending, every neuron tracing glowing patterns through his nervous system, an electrical grid of precision centered between the throbbing pulse of his prick and the tingling sharpness in the base of his skull. Pete takes a breath, swallows heavily and Patrick wonders if he’s about to say something, to shatter the fragile shimmergold that pulses on the swirl of dust motes around them. He sinks his teeth into his lower lip and _refuses_ to close his eyes.

Pete takes him in without a word. He sucks him down deliberately, each inch savored with the roll of his tongue, his slick, wet mouth burning heat into the throbbing length of Patrick’s aching cock. There’s a possibility, distinct, that Patrick’s entire life has been leading to this moment. To this heartstopcompletion of Pete’s mouth working wonder against sensitive skin, veins, hardness. His toes dig into the soles of his shoes, curled until they cramp against the battered canvas and he mouths prayers to the depths of Pete’s eyes.

Pete is slow. He’s methodical without being clinical, careful without lacking passion. He sucks and he dips his head until the tight heat of his throat opens around the thick, flared cap of Patrick’s prick, until his lips bump the coppered brass of Patrick’s zipper. Until he pauses, eyes on Patrick, and swallows thick and heavy around the vein-twitch length of Patrick’s erection. Yeah, Pete’s slow and he’s careful and he’s so fucking incomprehensibly _good_ at this. He pushes the length of his thumb over the drawn-tight swell of Patrick’s balls and groans as though Patrick is entirely, incomparably delicious.

This is the moment Patrick combusts.

He scrambles to shove Pete away, to grasp the base of his cock and squeeze hard to stave off the heat roiling low in his belly. Instead, he succeeds in coming – glorious, technicolor sensation that burns him raw from the inside out, that tears a shuddering, embarrassingly guttural groan from low in his chest – half in Pete’s mouth and half across it. He gasps an apology around the way his thighs spasm, the deep, bitten curve of his fingernails into Pete’s skin as the pulse of his cock gives way to tingling tremors.

He waits for Pete to laugh.

Instead, Pete licks the wound-raw tip of his sensitive, blood-gorged cock and Patrick hisses, flinching from the way it almost stings. There’s something wholly, ethereally beautiful about the way Pete blinks up, streaked with the pearlized shine of Patrick’s come across his chin. Patrick hauls him into his lap and kisses him, taurine, sticky-sweet sugar and bittersalt streaking wet and messy across his tongue.

He kicks away his jeans and shoes, shivering around the sensitive length of his nerve-bold prick, shimmies out of his shorts and knocks them to the floor. He’s unashamed to be naked, to feel the way Pete’s fingertips map the shape of him. Pete’s sneakers are cast aside, his this-side-of-too-tight jeans catching on the bumps of hips, knees, ankles. Patrick works them off, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth. All the better to press close and lick along the muscle-deep valley of his taut, tense thigh.

His cock is already stirring, hotdesperate and begging, as he laps along the length of Pete’s. He has no idea if this is what Pete’s into, knows it would feel like torture if someone did it to him. But. But there’s so much, so much to take in and explore and to learn. Last time was lost in the dark but now Pete is laid out, expecting and wanting, dull, dark dick curving stiff against the ink laced indelible between his hip bones.

Patrick has never wanted quite as much as he does right now. It throbs through his chest, through the battered wariness of his fucked-raw heart to pool, warm, in the base of his spine. He sucks Pete’s cock like it can offer absolution as he traces his fingertips along the crease of Pete’s ass. He finds it, tight heat puckered against the press of his inquisitive fingers. Pete twitches his hips, arches his back, pushes down and onto the invasive press of Patrick’s fingers until he’s halfway to the second knuckle.

“Lube,” Pete groans. Patrick almost blinds himself on the gorged, red length of Pete’s twitching cock in his desperate lunge for the nightstand. It scrapes, wet with spit and saltburn precome, against his chin. His mouth is stained with the taste of him.

He uses too much but doesn’t think about it. He’s trying not to think about much as he digs two fingers into the tight heat of Pete’s hole, as he feels slick, tight muscle and, where is it? Pete spasms, jolts with a livewire pulse, as Patrick’s fingertips meet the ridge and bump of his prostate. There. “Good?”

Pete makes a noise. It’s not like any noise Patrick has heard him — or any other other human — make before. It’s low and snarling and utterly animal. The last required blood cells make their way to Patrick’s leaking, throbbing erection. He’s harder than he ever imagined it was possible to be and whilst he doesn’t want to rush — wants to glut and gorge himself on every moan Pete can make for him — he’s honestly forgotten what it’s like to be truly inside another person and his blood-heavy cock _wants_.

“I — I’m going to—”

He doesn’t, can’t, finish that sentence. Pete, eyes barely open, lips barely parted, nods insensible and fucks down harder onto Patrick’s fingers. Patrick slips in another and wonders how many songs he can write to the beat of Pete’s stuttered moan of desperate carnality. He pulls his fingers free and kneels, trembling, between Pete’s legs.

The condom doesn’t want to cooperate. His hands fumble, his fingers too slippery with lube, the taste of it sharply chemical as he tries, and fails, to tear the foil with his teeth. There are hands — oh, Pete’s _hands_ — over Patrick’s. Sun-dark fingers wrapped around his own as he frees the condom from the grasp Patrick might  describe as vice-like if Patrick were capable of remembering words like ‘vice-like’. They trade; Patrick rolling under Pete, Pete rolling the condom over Patrick. Patrick’s back is to the headboard, slouched, Pete’s knees either side of his thighs.

Patrick can see the flush of his cock — tight, red, like sunburn — through the thin layer of latex and lube. The thick, ridged crown of it flares out, the tip a compass point drawn to the tight, bright heat of Pete’s hole.

“Please,” he says, the scar of his thumbprints marked in ruby against the copper of Pete’s hip bones. “Please, _please_.”

Pete smiles, lowers himself over the first brilliant, burnt-bold inch. Patrick goes entirely rigid, crown to toes as  he watches, utterly entranced, at the way his body plunders Pete’s, the way he slides, down and gloriously down until he stills. The graceful curve of his ass pushes tight to Patrick’s groin, his hot, heavy balls and red, rude cock rest against the damp flush of Patrick’s belly. It shudders with the stuttering breath Patrick hauls in and holds. He will _not_ come. Not yet.

The first thrust is slow, calculated precise and balanced on the weight of Pete’s arms at Patrick’s shoulders. He rises up and up, to his knees and pauses, licks his approval into the depths of Patrick’s mouth before dropping down with a groan. The next is faster, harder, a breathless grunt staining the air between them as he jolts back down to meet Patrick’s hips. They find a rhythm between the two of them, the slow build of a melody found in the thrust of Pete’s hips and the arch of Patrick's spine.

He finds that spot with the rubbered tip of his lust-gorged cock, knocks another of those noises from Pete, lost somewhere between Patrick’s teeth and tongue, glutting his lungs like oxygen as they rock together. They kiss endless, infinite and uncaring of anything else, hands roaming shy as their hips roll. Pete cups Patrick’s face like a teenager, Patrick strokes black and red bangs and loses himself in the way Pete’s ears shape under his fingertips. They have this forever and yet Patrick doesn’t want it to end, wants to deny the way his orgasm builds low in his belly, rolling heat through his spine, skittering shockwaves that crash glass through his vision. He’s pretty sure he’s still wearing his glasses.

Patrick’s hand finds the neglected throb of Pete’s cock, his thumb rubbing under the sticky-sweet tip as his palm pulses, pulses, pulses around the thickened length of it. Pete hisses against his lips, noses nudging, his body clenching, clamping down around Patrick. He rubs, strokes faster, harder, hauling Pete along with him.

“Gonna,” Pete gasps.

Patrick smiles. “Yeah.”

Pete comes first. He let’s go without a sound, without a word, teeth sinking desperate into the flushed, thick curve of Patrick’s lower lip. He comes with the throb of his body around the invasion of Patrick’s suddenly stuttering cock. He comes in thick, white ribbons that catch like pearls in the gold of Patrick’s body hair. He bites down on Patrick’s shoulder and Patrick shatters with him.

It goes like this; vision dimmed and hearing nothing more than a dull roar, the static hiss of empty seashells clutched in eager hands. It goes with the fire-in-his-belly of a match to gasoline, it races across his skin and strips all oxygen from his lungs until he’s floundering, until he’s drowning in the smellfeeltaste of Pete. It goes like nothing Patrick has felt before as his cock spurts desperate, pulsing throbs of bittersticky heat into the rubber between them. Patrick only knows he cries out because his throat feels raw with it.

They collapse, sated senseless for now, into the headboard. Pete holds him close, murmurs nonsensical encouragement into Patrick’s sweaty hair and Patrick succumbs to it.

Patrick comes home.

*

He wakes unfeasibly early, eyes and tongue sticky-sour with sleep. He rubs at one and swills the other away with two-day-old, stale water from the glass by his bed. There’s something damp and unpleasant stuck to his thigh. He thinks it may be the condom.

Pete stirs.

Patrick’s cock is hard in that sleepy-warm, early morning way, flushed pink. He could go for another round, could wake Pete with the wrap of his mouth around Pete’s own nocturnal erection. Instead he scratches at his sideburns and watches Pete blink awake, squinting in the dawn gloom.

Pete smiles, soft and tired, curling close to the curve of Patrick’s chest. “Good morning.”

“You need to get the fuck out of my bed,” says Patrick, less romantic than he intended. “Before my kid finds you here.”

“Nice,” Pete rasps, reaching past Patrick for the glass of water. He takes a sip and wrinkles his nose. He takes a gulp and wrinkles his whole _face_. “Dude, how long has that _been_ there? It tastes like the inside of a gym sock! I’m – am I gonna get legionnaires disease?”

“Come on, asshole,” Patrick can’t see Pete’s clothes but figures they’ll find them en route, like a charmingly pornographic game of hide and seek, “there’s orange juice in the kitchen,” Pete growls into the pillow, “or coffee,” Pete growls louder, “or coffee-flavored milk with tons of sugar.”

That does the trick. They stumble to the kitchen, biting kisses as they lunge for boxers and t-shirts. Pete looks good in Patrick’s Coltrane shirt and sweats, perched on the counter cradling a mug of vanilla-scented lies he’s going to look Patrick in eye and pretend is coffee. Patrick slugs down a mug of black-no-sugar and laughs at the way Pete grimaces when he tastes the bitter burn of it on his lips.

They have hours until Becky arrives. Patrick is resolutely not thinking about it.

Dexter joins them, shrieking with joy when Pete makes pancakes with sprinkles, when he breaks every house rule by letting Dexter eat on the couch in front of Sesame Street. They steal another kiss while Dexter shouts along with The Count. _One kiss! Two kisses! Three kisses! Ah-ah-ah-ah!_

This interlude was brought to you by the possibility of happily ever after.

Becky’s scowl isn’t enough to knock the bone-deep warmth from Patrick’s spine. The way Dexter rushes to greet her, for once, doesn’t kick him in the stomach. He smiles politely, uncaring either way and hands over the bag of clothes and pajamas she won’t touch but he sends anyway.

“You again,” she greets Pete, dressed now in yesterday’s eyeliner and too-tight jeans. “Here a lot, aren’t you?”

Pete smiles.

Dexter rushes her, bright grin and blue eyes shining like he has a secret to tell.

“Mommy!” he shrieks. Patrick smiles indulgently. It slides, inelegant, graceless, from his lips as Dexter continues, accusation unknowingly wrapped in excitement. “Daddy kissed Pete!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> Comments are kudos are amazing or you can swing by tumblr and say hi @sn1tchesandtalkers


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! What's the plural for gorgeous people? Gorgeouses? That's you guys!
> 
> Am I buttering you up? I mean, it's totally possible... But everything is probably going to be absolutely fine.
> 
> Probably.
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/30846634918/in/dateposted/)

There is a moment of absolute stillness.

Everything stops. Breathing, heartbeats, life on Earth (most likely), all hauled to shuddering silence in a room ripped free of breathable air. Patrick thinks, desperately clutching at any straw willing to make itself available, that maybe this is all some kind of terrible nightmare, that any minute now he’s going to wake up, panicked and sweaty and safe in his bed. Becky hasn’t moved, crouched down to Dexter.

She smooths a hand over his hair, wipes the pad of her thumb across his eyebrow and speaks. “What did you say, honey?”

Patrick is not a religious man but right now he prays. He invokes the virtue of any and all deities. He prays to God, to Allah, to fucking _Odin_ that Dexter will not repeat what he just said.

Dexter, a two-year-old and at the whim of no external force either mortal or divine, smiles even wider. “Daddy kissed Pete! Mwah!”

“Is that true, baby?” Becky is smiling at Dexter, rigid and immobile. Behind him, he hears the cat-like thump of Pete’s feet hitting the linoleum. He jolts, defensive and desperate, as Pete slips an arm around his waist. Instinct tells him to shove away, to hurl misfired accusation at Pete all dressed up in a costume of blind, unyielding panic.

“Pete _pirate_ , mommy! Raa!”

“I…” says Patrick valiantly, then finds he has nothing at all to add.

Pete doesn’t speak and that’s — well, Patrick’s fairly grateful for it, if he’s entirely honest. Pete is many things; maddening, improbable, beautiful, entirely bewitching and utterly unable to keep his mouth shut when it counts. There’s a defiant tilt to his jaw that only serves to expose the faint imprint of Patrick’s mouth (low enough to be hidden by a polo shirt, left on galleried display in a stretched out, over-washed t-shirt).

Becky is still smiling.

“I… I...” Patrick is stuck, caught, the record skipping over and over with no way at all to lift the needle. He stutters on the thick, wet weight of his own lungs and waits.

He waits and he doesn’t breathe.

“Dex, honey?” Patrick is chilled, burnt-frozen down the very marrow of his bones at the warmth in Becky’s tone. “Go get Nemo for me, there’s a good boy. You know you can’t sleep without him.”

Dexter shuffles to his room, obedient and a testament to hours of careful and rigorous implementation of gentle, affirmative parenting. Patrick has always been sure he’s been doing this all wrong. Perhaps not.

“Well,” Pete shrugs, thumb hooking into Patrick’s belt loop, a claim of territory that even Columbus would find inappropriate. “I guess now you know.”

Instinct — cursed, foul _instinct_ — makes him pull away, sends him scattering fridge magnets as he slams to the steel door and shakes his head. Not right now; inappropriate; fucking _dangerous_. If Pete’s hurt, he doesn’t show it, just folds his arms, leans back into the counter and stares her down. It’s Becky’s move and Patrick is wishing on every lucky charm he’s never owned that she’ll deal her checkmate swiftly.

“Is that true?” she asks, ensuring that Pete is excluded entirely from the question. Patrick blinks at her from behind his glasses, rabbiting heart thrumming too fast in the cavernous ache of his chest. Becky is barely five feet tall but seems larger. “Patrick. Is it true?”

He could lie. That’s absolutely an option that’s available to him. He could blame an overactive imagination induced by too many cupcakes and juice boxes, that Dexter is hallucinating on birthday frosting and gift wrap ink. That Pete is delusional, a friend without benefits and a desperate crush.

He nods, ashamed.

(Fuck, but there’s always _shame_. The nagging ferocity of a voice that hisses _your fault_ over and over again. He’s half heterosexual and he still fucked up. Fifty percent of the population available to him in a way that wouldn’t antagonize the one person — the one immovable object in the path of an unstoppable force — standing between him and his son. Patrick is flawed, deeply, darkly, irreparably.)

Pete snorts, hard and sharp, too loud in the echoing cavern of silence that stretches between them. “Are you for real? Like, seriously, is this a lights on, no one home sort of thing? Do you honestly think he _owes_ you something after you walked out and left him _literally_ holding the baby? When did _you_ last go to work on two hours sleep because Dex was running a fever, huh?” Patrick would like, very much, to once again clamp his hand over Pete’s bold, traitorous mouth but his arms don’t seem capable of complying with the desperate instruction of his panicking synapses. “You’re a bad parent, Becky, just — you’re the worst. Dex deserves better, Dex has _got_ better, because at least you did the right thing in walking away and leaving him with Patrick.”

“You think I’m a bad mom?” she addresses this at Patrick though it’s clearly aimed at Pete. Patrick shakes his head wildly, so fast and so hard that his jaw pools liquid heat that ricochets agony around his skull like gunfire. “Do you? You think you deserve a break? Dexter, honey get on out here.”

Dexter potters from his room, Nemo and, inexplicably, his frog night light clutched in chubby fists, his treasure held up for his mother’s approval. “Nemo, mommy!”

“Come on, honey.” He wanders to Patrick all smiles, fat little cheeks balled sweet around his gap-toothed grin. Patrick plucks him from the linoleum and holds him close, breathes in the smell of sugar-sweet pancakes and sweat-damp hair laced with the perfume of Johnson’s shampoo. “Dexter, we have to go, say _goodbye_ to daddy.”

It hits Patrick with the force of an explosion, all warmth tingling sweet down into his toes from the night before, from the morning spent imagining the impossibility of a future shaped like the three of them, ripped away. Patrick is cold. He fists a hand into the back of Dexter’s sweater, crushes him close and turns away like he can avoid the inevitable.

“Come to mommy, Dexter.”

“No,” whispers Patrick. There’s a knot of panic coiling in his guts, his chest, the staccato freneticism of his pulse shooting black and bitter against the fragile press of his ribs. Dexter wriggles, struggles, he doesn’t understand. “Becky, I — please, don’t. Don’t do this.”

Her voice is careful, clipped short with terrifying precision as she holds out her arms to his son. Their son. _His fucking son_. “Give him to me.”

Patrick shakes his head, he grasps onto Dexter tighter, presses him close enough that she can’t take him away. “Please. Please don’t do this. I — it won’t happen again. He didn’t see anything. He didn’t _see_ anything!”

“What the hell is going on?” Pete is only privy to half of the conversation. He can only comprehend the fragmented pieces Patrick has confessed, dirty and ashamed. “Could someone—”

“Becky, _please_.”

Dexter is crying, grasping fat little fists in the direction of Pete, the only sane person in a room of grownups he no longer understands. Pete takes him — tries to — hands sliding under his arms but Patrick locks up tight. He can’t let go, he won’t. “Patrick, c’mon, he’s just going to his mom’s, she’ll bring him back Monday, it’s fine.”

Becky cocks her head, bites her lip, says, “No. I won’t. _He_ knew the rules. He thinks I’m stupid, don’t you, Patrick? He thinks I didn’t already figure it out.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Pete demands, the fury of a man that doesn’t know the full extent of what he’s done, what he’s contributed to, shining fierce in his eyes.

“Becky, just — just _please_ , I—”

“It’s okay, little dude.” Pete is smiling. He’s smiling that big, bright preschool smile he wears for Lullabye like his logoed polo shirt. He’s doing this because Dexter is terrified and Patrick, face hot, wet, chest shuddered with sobs, is the cause. “Come on, hand him to me, it’s fine.”

Becky is done with toying with him, a cat with a mouse. “Give him to me. _Now_!”

The room, the apartment and possibly Chicago as a definitive entity, all of it is too small, too choked of breathable air. Patrick is past them before he’s thought about where he’s going, down the hallway and into the bathroom where he slams the door and clicks the lock into place. Dexter’s sobs bang like doldrums against the tile, amplified accusation of parental inadequacy. Patrick bounces on the balls of his feet, he shushes and cradles that damp little head close to his jaw.

“I’m sorry,” is all he can say, over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”

There are fists against the door, the wood shaking as someone slams into it and screams impotent rage through two inches of solid pine. Patrick thinks this must be a nightmare, Dexter heaving sobs into his neck, clinging to the worn cotton of that same Bowie shirt Patrick wore too many days in a row a lifetime ago.

Patrick lowers the two of them to the floor, back to the door, and begins to sing. Life on Mars — _her mummy is yelling no and her daddy has told her to go_ — caught on a loop. He forgets the words, the melody, winds up humming the chorus over and over in a voice that breaks and cracks. Dexter shudders against him, hiccuping sobs and crying for mommy, for daddy but mostly for Pete. She’s not kicking the door anymore and Patrick can’t decide if he’s thankful or terrified, biting sobs into his lower lip, scrubbing tears into the damp cotton of his shirt sleeve.

“It’s okay,” he assures Dexter softly, his forehead hot against Dexter’s smooth cheek, Dexter curls a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, whispers ‘daddy’ on a breath, just once. “Daddy’s right here, daddy’s got you.”

Pete’s voice is soft, muffled low against the grain of the wood as he mutters through the door. “Patrick? Just let me inside, babe, please? I — I want to help but… I don’t understand.”

Patrick is thinking in terms of emptiness. An empty bedroom, unused dinosaur comforter smoothed out straight; an empty living room with the toys gathering dust in the corner; an empty double bed, devoid of snoring toddler consuming mattress space like capitalism depends upon it. His chest burns cold and tears flow warm as he hauls the scent of Dexter’s scalp — that uniquely him scent that any parent would know in a heartbeat — and swears he won’t open the door.

“Daddy loves you,” he whispers fiercely, protective and desperate with the knowledge that Dexter doesn’t — can’t possibly — understand, won’t comprehend, won’t _remember_. “Daddy loves you more than anything else in the world, you know that? You’re — you’re daddy’s little dude, my — my perfect little guy. I love you, Dexy.”

“Oh Jesus Christ, Patrick? She’s, uh — she’s called the police.” Patrick imagines, with a smile filled with insincere reassurance shone directly into the face of Dexter’s desperately doubtful shivering lower lip, that Pete may be in the process of getting it. “You really ought to get out here.”

With the impending sense of foreboding of a man facing the firing squad, Patrick feels all hope bleed out. He’s wrung out, washed dry and left lacking. He smooths a hand through the bedhead mop of Dexter’s hair and draws a breath of baby scent.

“I love you,” Patrick repeats ferociously, as though he can brand the reverence of it into Dexter’s tiny, developing limbic system. A tattoo of mediocre apology branded there until he’s old enough to make the decision for himself. “You remember that, okay?”

The lock slides back under his hand, the hallway filled with Pete and navy-blue uniforms.

“Patrick Stump?” Patrick was arrested once, huddled in a plastic chair with a kindly custody officer while he called his mom and explained the expired driving license. At the time, he told himself it didn’t, couldn’t, get any worse. It appears he was wrong.

He nods. “Uh, yeah? I — I didn’t… He’s…” Dexter is still in his arms, still curled to his chest. “He’s my kid.”

The officers share a look with one another. Pete shrugs and stares at the floor. “Listen, son—” One officer takes half a step forward. Patrick immediately takes half a fumbled step back. “Just stay calm, okay? The lady outside, she’s his mother, right? And she’s here to collect him from you?”

“He lives _here_ ,” Patrick insists, convinced with each pulse of his stammering heart that if he can just demonstrate, articulate, the irrefutable evidence of Dexter’s presence, if he can adequately state his case, all of this will go away. He grips into the back of Dexter’s sweater a little tighter. “Look, his bedroom is right across the hall. It’s —”

“His _mother_ says he lives with her.”

Honestly, there is no appropriate answer to that statement. Patrick simply stares, stilled, mouth open and all speech robbed from his traitorous tongue.

“Wait,” says Pete. He steps forward but the other cop shoves him back. “Hey! What the hell was _that_ for? Look, I’m the child’s daycare teacher, he’s resident with his father, all of the paperwork, everything, he lives at this address, I can vouch for—”

“Right,” says the cop, ennui smudged across his face. “I don’t want to have to arrest you for custodial interference. You got a court order that says he lives here?”

Patrick does not. “Well, like. Not _exactly_ but—”

“Give me the kid,” the other officer, silent until now, grabs for Dexter. Patrick, an idiot and a desperate man, pulls back. The thing is: he has no idea of his agenda, what possible outcome he thinks can result from two men with handcuffs and handguns. But he can’t let go of Dexter. “Let go of the child, sir, or I’m gonna have no choice but to arrest you.”

“You can’t—” Patrick can’t breathe, suffocating on sobs, or an asthma attack, or his own desperate tongue, “— can’t take him. Mine. He’s _mine_.”

Someone says, “To hell with this,” Patrick can hear the click of the cuffs over his own labored breathing, over the shudder of Dexter’s sobs against his shoulder. Thin and high and achingly panicked, he claws desperate from Patrick’s arms.

“Come here,” says Pete, soft and low. He pries Dexter gently from the cramp-tight vice of Patrick’s grasp. Patrick, defeated, lets go. “That’s it, it’s okay. Daddy’s fine, he’s just fine. Come on, little dude, shall we go say hi to mommy? Shall we? Yeah!”

“He’s my son,” he tells the cop — the kinder one — barely breaking a whisper. It sounds less like the truth each time he says it out loud. The cop shrugs, apathetic, and walks away. His radio hisses and pops and Patrick considers how likely it is to die from a broken heart.

There is, Patrick notices, a tiny crack in the corner of the picture frame that holds the baby portrait of Dexter in the hallway. A spidered shaft of broken particle board that splinters through the dark paint. In his chest, his heart does the same, spreading faint with a webbing of delicate, veined imperfections. He can’t cry, though it doesn’t seem to stop the tears.

He’s aware of Pete before he’s truly _aware_ of Pete. The vague notion of a bright shirt and brighter shoes, of someone squatting down close to where he’s collapsed, curled into the wall and around a clownfish plushie that smells of sticky hands and cookie crumbs.

“Patrick, I —”

“Shut up,” Patrick hisses, hands wrapped over his ears. He thinks, and this isn’t a vague attempt at dramatism, that the universe may be tearing apart. He rests his head against the wall. “Leave me alone.”

Pete sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me? I — I could’ve helped.” Patrick is cycling rapidly through the stages of grief. Only, really, what’s actually happened is that he’s skipped denial entirely and is caught inescapably on anger. Pete, because he apparently has no sense of what, precisely, is good for him, elects not to shut his fucking mouth. “Listen,” as if Patrick has a choice, “I know this — I know it’s not ideal but… we can — we can fix this. Together. Get custody of Dexter squared up and—”

Dexter’s height notched in six monthly intervals against the paintwork twists his gut. “Get out.”

“I — what?” Pete says stupidly. This is categorically not the first stupid thing Pete has done today. He set sail on a course of idiocy the second he opened his fucking mouth in front of Becky. “Come on, babe. We can—”

“ _We_?” Patrick hisses. There was a moment, curled warm and safe in cotton and comforter and the smell of Pete’s throat against his lips, when Patrick almost gave in to thinking in ‘we’. He realizes, belatedly and with the kind of self-loathing that pounds a 3/4 beat of _stupid, stupid, fucking stupid_ against the bone-brittle stretch of his sweat-slick forehead, that there is no such thing as ‘we’. He breathes very deeply and spits his fury into Pete’s blissfully confused amber eyes. “There is not, and never will be, a fucking _we_ that includes me and you. I just lost my fucking _son_ and you want to talk about _us_ as a goddamn _entity_? Are you — are you fucked in the head? Get away from me! Get out of my fucking house and — just leave me alone!”

Apparently unwilling to take Patrick seriously at this, the most shattering moment of his adult life to date, Pete rests a hand against Patrick’s shoulder and squeezes softly. “Listen—”

Like a calm and rational human being thrown entirely into frenzied displays of manic rage, Patrick shoves him away, the flat of his forearm shoved the breadth of Pete’s chest. Balanced on the balls of his feet, Pete tips, stumbles backwards and lands flat on his ass on linoleum posing as hardwood.

“No,” Patrick snarls, drawn entirely from the fury spreading heat through his chest, his guts, the deep, red gore of him. “ _You_ fucking listen. I’m going to keep the words fucking _small_ , okay? She has taken my fucking _son_. I do _not_ have a court order. I will not _get_ a court order. Because I can’t afford a fucking _lawyer_ and she fucking _can_. Do — why didn’t you just _shut up_?”

Patrick is fighting fury with nausea, unsure if he’s going to slam his fist through the wall or barf on it. Dexter’s shoes are abandoned by the front door, still propped open, Pete’s Montero sagging against the curb with the ‘little dude on board’ sign he picked up from Target hung in the window. There is no part of Patrick Stump on this plane of reality or any other that isn’t crumbling away to so much dust and shell and hope-lost anguish.

Pete whispers, knees drawn to his chest. “I’m sorry.”

Patrick laughs, huffing the sound bitter and mirthless from the back of his throat. “So am I. Get out.”

“Patrick, _please_.” Pete is doing an awfully good impression of someone who thinks it might be appropriate to move back towards Patrick right now. Patrick makes a snap decision on his earlier debate and slams his knuckles into the wall right by his head, hard enough to mark both skin and plaster. It’s good, he decides, to watch the way Pete flinches back.

“Get. Out.”

He hears, but doesn’t see, Pete climbing to his feet. He doesn’t see it because there is no way he’s lifting his cheek from the once-cool-now-warm roughness of the badly painted hallway wall. Each sound echoes down through the curious hollowness of him; through ribs and skull and into oddly-numb fingertips. Patrick has forgotten how to feel. He hears Pete collect his car keys echoing from some far away place, the sound of him shoving on shoes and grabbing his jacket.

Pete pauses in the open doorway. There’s no one left in the world for Patrick to hate ~~love~~. This is oddly comforting in a bizarre sort of way. “Do you want me to leave?” Patrick nods, not because he specifically wants _Pete_ to hurt but because he no longer wants to hurt himself. This seems like the only available option, passing pain like relay batons. “I’ll just…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he does close the door. It clicks — fragile sound set to shatter somewhere between the doorframe and the taut thrum of Patrick’s shredded nerve endings — and the apartment falls silent.

Patrick stays on the floor.

It’s not that he thinks anything can be achieved from lying there — hollow inside — it is simply that he can see no point at all in doing anything else. He stays there until the shadows change and shift, until morning bleeds into afternoon and gives way to the rose-gold glow of evening sunlight spidering through the open window.

Then, he rises to unsteady feet, stained sticky with salt and agonizing shame, and makes his way down the street to the 7-Eleven. There, under the glow of fluorescent lights and a disinterested checkout clerk, he buys his relief in the form of a liter of dirt-cheap vodka.

Patrick may have to live through this, but he doesn’t have to _feel_ it.

*

“ _You’ve_ been dating a parent? Patrick?” Vicky says slowly. Pete nods. “And _you_ knew about this?” she asks, and Joe nods. “And now Dexter isn’t coming to daycare anymore because his mom found out?” They nod in unison. Vicky lowers her face into both hands, muffled as she speaks. “Oh _God_ , we’re going to be on the news…”

“It’s _maybe_ not that bad,” Pete offers. It sounds doubtful, though. “ _Maybe_ —”

Joe’s elbow meets his ribs, blue eyes murderously imploring _shut the fuck up before we both wind up fired, instead of just you_. He hisses. “ _Dude_!”

“Are—” Pete starts, breathes, starts again, “—are you mad at me?”

Vicky sighs. It sounds irritated. “Now, why would I be mad at _you_ , exalted model employee that you are?”

“I mean,” Pete says, gesturing vaguely at the thank you cards on the wall, “ _technically_ there’s nothing in my contract to say I _can’t_ date a parent.”

“And,” Joe cuts in desperately, “that means _technically_ I didn’t do shit!”

Pete makes a mental note that Joe is a deeply traitorous friend and not to be trusted an inch. Joe returns the look with the kind of disdain that suggests Pete can absolutely captain his sinking ship alone, that Joe will bail faster than he can say his own name. There is, Pete resolves, no such thing as true loyalty any more.

“Calm down, boys,” Vicky sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her tension headache is _not_ Pete’s fault. “No one’s getting fired just yet. Have you spoken to Patrick? What’s going on with Dexter?”

“I’m working on it,” says Pete.

Really, what Pete actually means, is that Patrick hasn’t answered, acknowledged or returned a single one of his calls, texts or emails since it happened. Pete is honestly starting to wonder if he should attempt to communicate in smoke signals. Or by shining a really big, hat-shaped light into the sky at night.

(Hatman was, is and no doubt always will be, the very height of his comedic sophistication.)

Joe, still traitorous, rolls his eyes. “He means he’s been lying in his bed every night drinking tequila and listening to Morrissey.”

“That,” says Pete, with lofty inflection, “is _not_ all I’ve been doing.”

“This is true,” Joe tells Vicky. “He’s also been writing terrible poetry on LiveJournal.”

Vicky tuts. Pete wonders how it’s possible to inject quite so much judgement into the click of her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “And how’s that working out for you?”

“If I can get together a reliable band, I’m pretty sure I can market it as a The Smiths revival,” Pete taps his chin thoughtfully, “So, you know, that’s something. Since my 401k _sucks_.”

“Now is _not_ the time to smart mouth me,” she warns him, finger pointed directly at the hollow ache where his heart once was. “That poor guy, though. He’s _such_ a good dad…”

There’s an idea. Maybe. The definite stirrings of one, for sure. Pete has a lot of terrible ideas but suspects this one might actually be okay. He raps his knuckles sharply against the edge of Vicky’s desk, an orator calling for attention.

“Hey,” he says. “Can I take a personal day?”

Vicky raises an eyebrow like a boss that knows him far too well. “For…? When…?”

“The execution of the kind of perfectly formulated plan I’m sure I’ll have by the time I get there,” he assures her. “And, uh — now?”

She pauses, head cocked, the clock behind her pacing out seconds that he’s now convinced he doesn’t have the time to waste. She nods, slowly, and he’s halfway out of the door before she has the chance to call after him. “Pete! _Please_ don’t wind up on the news!”

“Got it!”

“And if you _do_ , _please_ make sure you’re not wearing your Lullabye shirt. I _will_ deny ever seeing you before in my life.”

He grins, hammering heart shuddering shockwaves at the half-formed notion of Patrick’s happy ending. “Duly noted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Superpete rushing to the aid of Hatman! It's bound to be okay now, right?
> 
> Comments and kudos are fabulous or you can find me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.
> 
> See you next week. Same time, same place, same channel!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does Pete have a plan?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry dudes, no pictorial accompaniment today as this update comes to you courtesy of the rattliest train in the UK...
> 
> Anyway, you don’t care about that... have some cute single dad and his dorky daycare worker!

There’s a curious place, somewhere between dreaming and waking, some fragile shimmer of liminal space where everything in Patrick’s life is okay. It’s there, fleeting, in the moment he wakes every morning to the ear-scarring shriek of his alarm, the five to fifteen seconds of not knowing, not recalling why it is that he’s being jerked awake by a shitty Nokia and not by some tiny someone bouncing on his stomach.

Five to fifteen seconds is the only part of Patrick’s day that feels close to tolerable. It’s the only time he can breathe without feeling it ache in his chest. Most days, even when the agonising truth creeps back in, insidious, he keeps his eyes closed and imagines it was all a dream, a hideous nightmare and any second… Any second, he’s going to wake up, curled around Pete while Dexter sleeps off the sugar high hangover of birthday cake in the next room.

Patrick hasn’t seen his son in twenty-nine days. In fact, Patrick hasn’t seen anyone at all that isn’t a colleague or a customer in that interminable stretch of seconds, minutes, hours. His mom’s calls stay unanswered and never returned, his voicemail flashing full. He thinks she stood and called through the door one night but he was too blazed on cheap liquor to be sure.

“Dude, can I talk to you?” Andy asks from the far side of a fresh shipment of Adidas sneakers.

Patrick blinks slowly and attempts to process the words. They’re probably the first ones someone has spoken to him directly since his last shift, which means his reply will be the first noise beyond desperate, hitching sobs to scrape its way over his vocal cords in just as long. “Uh — sure? I guess. What — what’s up?”

“I meant,” Andy pauses and pinches the bridge of his nose, he sighs, long-suffering and gestures towards the ‘staff only’ door, “I meant out back. Alone.”

It seems entirely rhetorical as he takes off. Patrick follows, polyester shirt sending static shocks down to his fingertips each time he brushes a shelf with the back of his hand until they convene in the employee lounge. Patrick tries not to look at the computer in the corner, to consider the screen that won’t show him Dexter at Lullabye because Dexter isn’t _there_.

“Patrick, buddy.” Andy stops, like he only thought this far and has nothing more to say.

Patrick blinks. He waits politely and eventually, concerned that Andy has forgotten why they’re here or that, by some weird twist of the cosmos he has actually ceased to exist on the physical plane, he says, “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?” Andy asks.

For a moment, Patrick feels the closest to laughing that he’s felt in weeks. Not mirth though, no. It’s hysteria bubbling bright in his chest as he closes his fist around the back of a worn out chair someone picked up from craigslist. ‘Okay’ is no longer a tangible thing that Patrick knows. ‘Okay’ is the friend of a friend that Patrick used to know but hasn't spoken to in long enough that communication would feel awkward if he tried. There are many things he could say right now and all of them would lead to him getting fired and — God knows — this job is now literally, depressingly, the only thing he’s got. He shrugs helplessly.

“I — I… ” he pauses and takes a breath. He hasn’t said it out loud yet. He hasn’t twisted his mouth to the shape of his new reality, of his world without Dexter. He bites his lip and stares at the carpet instead.

“Dude, I _know_ , I get it,” Andy cuts in on an exhale. “But like, do you think you should be _here_ right now?”

Patrick’s brow creases, he shakes his head and shrugs, confused. “Where else would I be? Where — where else would I _go_?”

“I’m just saying,” Andy says to the air conditioning unit rather than Patrick. “Maybe… You should take some time off. Get your head straight.”

Honestly? Patrick would rather shove his hand straight into the blender he used to use to make Dexter’s homemade, organic sweet potato puree when he was weaning than spend days alone on his couch. He spends his evenings that way already, his weekends and the other endless stretches of time he can’t devote to selling douchebags overpriced sneakers. His job is shitty, God knows he hates it with the fire of a thousand dying suns, but it’s _something._

It’s a reason to get dressed, to interact with other people and proof that he exists on some tangible plane of reality outside of his empty apartment nightmare. It’s also regular money tipping into his bank account, enough that he can dream of one day siphoning off a chunk to maybe — possibly — consider the chance of instructing a lawyer.

He shakes his head, a marionette jolted by careless hands. “No. No, I don’t need to do that. Actually, I was thinking maybe you could give me some extra shifts, I really—”

“Patrick, seriously,” his voice has that soft edge to it, the gentle cadance of fatherhood that makes Patrick’s eyes sting, “when did you last take a shower?”

That curls fire in Patrick’s belly. That’s _personal_. That’s none of Andy’s fucking _business_. That’s… actually a pretty good question. He shrugs weakly and makes a vague hand gesture that lies somewhere between apology and a plea for mercy. “Please don’t fire me. Fuck, this is — I _hate_ this place but I hate it less than my apartment right now, I… Please? I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“For God’s sake, I’m not gonna…” Andy trails off and bites his lip. “Look. You’re not in the room right now. You’re — you’re trying but it’s just… I don’t know what to do.”

Patrick will beg if he has to. “You just need to let me work, _please_ , I — I need to work. I can work weekends, evenings, anything the other guys don’t want to do. Just — just give it to me. I’ll take a shower, I’m sorry, I just—”

“Uh, guys?” Brendon, the new guy, some college kid fresh to Northwestern taking the music classes Patrick never completed but like, _totally_ isn’t jealous about, pokes his head around the door. “Sorry to interrupt but there’s a guy outside saying he needs to speak to Patrick…”

In the two years that Patrick has worked at XO, not a single human being has ever asked to speak to him by name. There was the incident concerning the missold running shoes but that guy categorically didn’t use the name Patrick’s mother logged on his birth certificate. That it’s never happened before means that it probably isn’t a good thing but — and Patrick can’t really stress this enough — whoever is out there asking for him _by name_ is the best excuse he has to get away from this conversation.

“I should…” he says, gesturing vaguely to the shop floor specifically and Chicago at large generally.

Andy narrows his eyes in a way that suggests this exchange is in no way over. “Yeah. I guess.”

Patrick’s relief at exiting the employee lounge and Andy’s concern lasts for precisely as long as it takes for him to realize that the guy asking for him is Pete. There’s a possibility that a smarter man may have figured that out before bursting onto the shop floor with a customer service smile and hair that (now he’s thinking about it) hasn’t seen shampoo in well over a week. Patrick is not that smarter man.

“Oh,” Patrick says softly. “It’s you.”

Pete is smiling. It’s the kind of smile worn by leading men in romance movies; brave around the eyes and glazed with the hint of impending rejection. Patrick’s guts twist, the unmalleable tangle of thorns breaking brick. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“You need to go,” all Patrick can see, rolling like polaroids across the shaking stretch of his cerebral cortex, is Pete carrying Dexter out of the apartment and out of his life, “I’m like, _super_ busy right now—”

Behind him, Andy (that disloyal dissident to work-based friendship) declares. “You can take a break if you need to talk to your friend, we’re not busy.”

“Yes,” Patrick’s teeth are gritted hard enough that they ache through the roots, “we _are_ busy. I have — like, _stock_ to deal with and… and those special orders came in.”

“Brendon can do it,” Andy shrugs, from behind the stacks, someone — Brendon, presumably — yelps ‘what the _fuck_?’, “take as long as you need.”

“It won’t take long.” Pete’s eyes are molten copper which is a coincidence because that’s precisely what seems to be filing Patrick’s lungs. “Can’t we just—”

“No!” Patrick was aiming for authoritative but seems to have become snagged on shrill. “We can’t _just_. Get out. Go — go back to work and… leave me alone.”

“You don’t get it,” Pete follows him down the stacks, still talking, still being entirely un-fucking-fair hauling painful pictures of could-have-been along with the squeak of his converse, “I can _fix_ this, I just need you to hear me out. Please, I—”

Pete stops talking. He stops because Patrick has slammed him back into a shelf with one fist curled into each placket of his hoodie. Patrick has no idea what to do now. He’s never been in a fist fight (Carl Schuhmann punching him in the face in eighth grade doesn’t count) and he’s not sure, honestly, that he wants to get into his first with Pete. He keeps his voice as level as he can, thick-sore with tears at the back of his throat. “Shut. Up.”

“Please,” Pete repeats. His hands are loose at his sides and Patrick knows — he knows with an ache in his heart — that if he split those pretty lips or blacked those amber-glow eyes, Pete wouldn’t fight back.

They’ve drawn a crowd. Well, as much of a crowd as can reasonably be expected in a small, independent sports store on a Wednesday morning. Pete reaches for his hand and Patrick’s common sense, will to remain in gainful employment — and his entire fucking _universe_ probably — implodes.

“You don’t fucking _get_ it, do you?” he snarls, because if he doesn’t keep it cold he knows he’s going to cry. “You ruined my fucking life because you couldn’t just _back off_ like a normal person. You — I haven’t seen him since you _gave_ him to her, you know that? I haven’t seen my son in nearly a month and it’s _all your goddamn fault_.”

“Please,” Pete whispers. “Patrick, please.”

Listen, it’s not that Patrick doesn’t want the picket fence, the dog, the fucking dad-wagon car that he washes every Saturday parked on the driveway. He does. He wants it so badly it makes his stomach hurt. But Patrick is learning and Patrick has drawn this conclusion: that there is no happily ever after in which he gets those things.

“She won’t even let me talk to him on the phone.” Patrick’s tried, over and over, and endless loop of voicemail messages until it stopped ringing and began to inform him ‘this number is not in service’. “He’s — he’s probably already forgetting who I am.”

Before Pete can speak, before he issues another plea in the face of another furious round of back-and-forth neverminds, before Patrick can fall from this, the highest precipice on which he’s ever stood and considered the possibility of hurling himself to the ground, Andy intervenes. Hand on Pete’s shoulder and fingers pressed to Patrick’s chest, he gently eases them apart.

“Outside, big guy,” he says, and somehow it doesn’t sound patronizing. “He’s not going to talk to you right now.”

Not now, not ever again, Patrick thinks, refusing to look away as Pete is escorted to the door. The crowd’s feigned disinterest quickly becomes genuine ennui and they drift away. Patrick adjusts the rumpled mess of discounted sweatpants he shoved Pete into and watches him cross the sidewalk. Then, disconcertingly, he watches him turn back to face the store, eyes locked defiantly on Patrick’s as he lowers himself to the asphalt, tucks his knees to his chest and settles in.

Well, if Pete wants to play Asshole Chicken, that’s fine by Patrick. He adjusts his lanyard like a real man, straightens his shoulders and focuses on unpacking sneakers that absolutely don’t need to be unpacked. Across the aisle, Andy and Brendon watch but Patrick isn’t thinking about that. He unpacks. Pete sits.

Impasse.

An hour in and Andy approaches. “Don’t you think you ought to…?”

“Nope.” Patrick doesn’t think any more. He just unpacks. He unpacks until everything is out of its box and then he moves back down the shelf, putting everything back. “I don’t.”

By the end of the second hour, Patrick has moved on to reorganizing the New Era caps by color rather than sports team. This is annoying both Andy and the kind of douchebags buying New Era caps. Outside, Pete has procured Starbucks and appears to be making camp. Snow is forecast for the afternoon. Patrick wonders if he’ll face a homicide charge when Pete inevitably freezes to death.

“He’s still out there,” Brendon observes, three and a half hours in. There’s awe in his voice. “It’s _snowing_ and he hasn’t moved like, _at all_.” Patrick’s grunt is entirely apathetic. “I think he’s serious, dude. What the hell did he do, anyway?”

Patrick grimaces. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did he crash your car?” Brendon, apparently, doesn’t believe in keeping his mouth shut, following Patrick along the aisle and spouting supposition. “Break your TV? Ooh, did he like, sleep with your girlfriend or something? Oh, damn, that’s super not cool, man. You want me to go smack him around a little? I think I could take him if—”

Patrick’s tenuous hold on the final, frayed thread of his worn thin patience snaps entirely. So done is Patrick with this shit that the crimson rage in his chest begins to physically burn. He rounds on Brendon, backing him into a crossfit display.

“Shut up! Just — just _shut up_!” he roars, attempting to slam a dumbbell down onto the shelf and succeeding only in crushing three of his fingers. “He was my fucking _boyfriend_ , okay?” Brendon’s eyes are very wide, his hand clapped over his mouth in an apparent attempt to stop anymore stupid from leaking out at the corners. “He — he was my boyfriend and then everything got fucked up and now I don’t get to see my kid. Now, would you back off and let me figure out if my goddamn fingers are broken?”

“I’m sorry,” Brendon squeaks, flushed a satisfying shade of crimson. Patrick flexes his fingers and figures they’re still mostly functional. “I — I didn’t know.”

“Patrick,” Andy, harbinger of sports store harmony and attracted no doubt by the shouting and crashing, appears from behind the stack, “I want you to get rid of him,” he jerks a thumb in Pete’s general direction, “before I go out there and covers him in sale stickers so he’s at least decorative.”

“How,” Patrick begins, sounding lofty but feeling small, “do you propose I make him leave, exactly? The _snow_ has failed to complete that task. If lake-effect weather doesn’t work, well, I’m only one man.”

Andy rolls his eyes and sighs in a way that sounds distinctly long-suffering. “My _proposition_ , genius, is that you go out there and uh — crazy thought — _talk_ to the asshole getting frostbite of the dick. _Now_. Consider it an extended lunch break.”

Patrick considers an argument and comes up with nothing. He collects his coat and hat from the employee lounge and trudges out into the greying slush gathering on the sidewalk. Pete has tucked his forehead to his knees. Someone has placed five dollars onto the snow between his toes. He’s entirely pathetic and all Patrick wants to do is sink into his chest and hear him say it’s going to be okay.

He clears his throat awkwardly. “Uh, so — hey.”

There’s snow caught in Pete’s hair, twisting silvered amongst the red and black fall of his bangs. He raises his head and reveals eyes much the same; kohl streaked around eyes swollen sore with tears. Patrick’s heart twists, jolts and attempts to crawl down into his toes.

“Hi,” Pete whispers, rough and gravelled. “You… want me to leave, right?”

Patrick scuffs the toe of his sneaker against the small bank of snow building against Pete’s thigh. There’s something truly Dickensian about this whole affair. “Would you go if I did?”

Steamed breath puffs between Pete’s lips as he makes a sound that would be a laugh if it was a little less agonized. He shrugs helplessly and spreads his hands — fingers tipped blue-gray in the cold — like he can encompass everything he wants to stay in a gesture.

“I want...” he trails off long enough to stand and push his hands through his bangs. “I’m trying to help. I think — I think I can. Help. If, uh, you let me.”

Patrick shrugs and thinks about slinging his coat around Pete’s shivering shoulders. Instead, he tugs off his beanie, hair flying staticky and lank all at once, and jams it down onto Pete’s head, over the cold-tipped points of his ears.

“Okay, asshole,” he sighs, pretending not to notice the smile that tugs at the corners of Pete’s lips. He’s not giving in. He’s definitely Still Angry. “You’ve got the length of my lunch break to explain this master plan.”

They wind up in a diner half a block away. It’s one of _those_ places, Americana (Chicagoana?) on the walls; Cubs pennants and black-framed monochrome prints of Muddy Waters and Michael Jordan, TGI-themed vomit. They order sandwiches they don’t eat and coffee they do drink, steam rising gently from Pete’s soaked jeans in the overheated fug of the dining area.

Patrick sits across from him, not because he wants to avoid any potential scenarios in which their thighs brush but because he doesn’t trust himself to know how to react if they _do_. He cradles his coffee mug and waits for the words to find their way to his mouth as he taps the tabletop with cheap porcelain spidered with heatmarks.

When he speaks, it clashes with Pete, a messy tangle of syllables laced with quick apologies and stuttered nonsense of ‘no, no, after you’. He falls silent and stares at Pete with just the right level of expectation he thinks is befitting for this; the meeting Pete demanded.

“How’ve you been?” Pete asks on a breath between them.

Patrick shrugs; he can’t tell Pete that he’s thought more than once — more than many time times — about downing every pill he can find in the bathroom cabinet. Washing them away with whatever dregs of cheap liquor linger in whatever discarded bottles he can find by the sink and waiting for something. Something better than this. He can’t tell him that the only reason he _hasn’t_ done that is because one day, one glorious day, Dexter might come looking for him. He’d like to leave him with more than an _in memoriam_ in the Glenview Lantern.

So, Patrick says this: “I’m fine. I’m absolutely, totally _fine_. You said you could fix this…?”

“I’m sorry,” Pete starts and Patrick considers strangling him with his scarf because if this is the master plan then it’s very much fucking _lacking_ in finer details. “About — about everything.”

“Good to know,” Patrick snaps, fumbling for his wallet. This is not what he had in mind when he left the relative safety of XO. “Look, like I said, I’m super fucking busy and I — well. It’s not like I have anything but my shitty job now, so…”

The inflected ‘which is your fault entirely’ is unsaid but very much in the room with them as Pete blinks up at him. He looks as though he’s thinking about taking Patrick’s hand. Patrick forms a fist and something skitters across Pete’s face that suggests he just rethought that notion entirely.

“My dad’s a lawyer,” he says instead. “A — a really good one.”

_Good for you_ , flits across the tip of Patrick’s tongue as he wonders what the fuck Pete Wentz Senior’s position on the Chicago employment ladder has to do with him. Pete is still looking at him like the words should make sense and, because he doesn’t want to go back to work and he damn sure doesn’t want to go back to the apartment, Patrick sits back down.

“You must be very proud,” he snaps, asinine. “But here I am, fresh out of shiny gold stars. Bummer.”

“No,” Pete seems to have confused himself, caught between nodding and shaking his head. He sways in his seat a little, describing odd rounds with his neck until he stills, face in his hands. “That’s not what I meant. He’s a _matrimonial_ attorney.”

“Oh, well. Guess that makes a whole ton of no sense, then,” Patrick mutters at his coffee cup. “Listen, I’m running on like, two hours of sleep and caffeine pills I’m pretty sure were licensed by no pharmacist ever. Explain to me, very slowly, what that has to do with me.”

The smile creasing the corners of Pete’s mouth is infuriating. Patrick’s gaze snags on the thick, lush curve of the lower lip each time he glances up, haunted by the ghost of makeouts past. Pete folds a sugar packet between his fingers, twisting and turning until the paper gives and the contents cascade stickily across laminated plastic.

“He specializes in child custody arrangements,” Pete scribes a fingertip through the sugar, twisting an orante P through the grains as Patrick’s heart stutters, flips backwards then crawls into the back of his throat. “I thought that might be something you’d find useful.”

Pete’s smile is widening, half hidden in the bite of his lip but fairytale, happily ever after bright. It’s the kind of smile that speaks of a man who’s won; a man who is victorious; a man who is claiming his prize in the form of wooing the damsel in distress. (For the sake of anyone who has yet to work it out; _Patrick_ has absolutely been cast as the extremely reticent princess. Which is bullshit, really. Pete can take his white horse and stick it.)

There is, perhaps, a nobler version of Patrick sitting in a diner opposite a version of Pete who thinks before he speaks. But Patrick is stuck with these two versions, with the Pete who keeps smiling and the Patrick who’s going to be forced to state the obvious. “I can’t afford your dad, asshole.”

“No, I guess you can’t. He’s like… the fucking _best_ at what he does and that shit comes with a price tag to match, you know,” Pete shrugs maddeningly and takes a long, meditative sip of his latteccino with extra cream, extra sugar, extra drizzle and half the joe. The silence drags on a beat, two, Patrick is wondering how far up Pete’s ass he can shove that coffee cup when he speaks again. “Which is why he’s doing it pro bono.”

“Pro bono?” Patrick repeats. His lips feel oddly numb, his vision swimming in a way that suggests he may be about to pass out cold on the table top. He takes a restorative swig of coffee and a deep breath.

“It means for free,” Pete offers helpfully.

“I know,” says Patrick, through gritted teeth, “what it means. I — _why_?”

Pete scrubs the pad of his thumb into his eye socket, smearing his eyeliner in a way that shouldn’t be attractive but God — fucking _God_ — it absolutely is. He smiles, half shy and half fearful of rejection and raises his shoulders in a shrug. He’s dried out, mostly anyway, his hair curling a little at the ends as he swipes the sugar granules in front of him smooth once more then carves a tiny heart in the center.

“Because I asked him to. I explained what happened and he wanted to help. He likes you, he likes _me_ around you and — and he likes Dexter.”

Patrick nods. There’s a hot, sweaty panic crawling along his spine at the mention of Dexter’s name out loud. The delicate threads of self-control groan under the strain, they creak and give and they crack. Patrick sobs, sudden and inelegant, skin sticky-wet and hot as he heaves into his hands. “I — I fucking miss him. I miss him so fucking much I want to fucking _die_ from it. Do — do you think that’s possible?”

The scrape of Pete’s chair to the tile is not dissimilar to fingernails down the length of a chalkboard. He shoves it back hard enough that it clatters to the floor, half a heartbeat until he’s cleared the table and takes Patrick into his arms.

“Shit, I…” he runs out of words before he finds any and settles instead for burying his face in Patrick’s neck. “Don’t — don’t cry. Unless it helps? Then fucking _let go_ , dude.”

Pete smells the same as he always does; cheap cologne, expensive hair product and Lullabye. They stay like that for a while, Patrick sobbing until his stomach hurts, until he retches and tastes bile at the back of his throat. If this is unconditional, immeasurable love, Patrick’s not sure he wants it any more.

The hoodie pressed to his cheek is soaked once more. “M’sorry,” he mumbles. “I should have it together. Everyone thinks—”

“ _I_ think you’re a dad who misses his kid,” Pete murmurs into his hair. Patrick wants to crawl into him, into the hot, wet guts of him and curl around his heart until everything stops and he feels safe. “I want to help.”

Patrick pulls back reluctantly. He forces distance between their bodies because this — _this_ — is what caused the trouble in the first place. He takes a deep breath. “We can’t be together. Not — not right now. Maybe never.”

“I know,” says Pete sadly, a wistful ghost of a smile curling his lips. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Let me help. Because I want to, not so you’ll owe me.”

Patrick nods around the fog of his glasses. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you next week? Same time, same place, same channel!
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated or you could find me on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my dudes! I hope you’ve all had a fantastic week and that you’re enjoying the weekend. Would you like to see how our single dad is getting along? Let’s go!

December is cold, Midwest cold. It’s less like weather and more like biting, frozen fingers that wrap around any and all exposed skin. It slithers under scarves and nips along uncovered collars as the sky hangs low, grey, dull and threatening the apocalypse in the form of endless snow flurries that never really go anywhere. It’s the opposite of oppressive summer heat, where the only cool breeze rolls in off the lake. That breeze is meaner now, whipping fury ahead of itself in the form of forecasted blizzards.

So, of course, it’s entirely logical that Patrick is clearing out the garage at his mom’s house, down to nothing more than a flannel shirt with a beanie he stole from Pete pulled low over his ears. It must be ten below already but he’s sweating enough that it stings into his eyes, hauling box after box from shelves and dark corners. Patrick has discovered this: mindless, meaningful physical work makes it almost impossible to think.

He prefers not thinking to the intolerable alternative.

“You need a coat,” his mom advises from the adjoining door, bringing the smell of home cooking and a burst of additional light. He shrugs and carries right on methodically moving old suitcases from one end of the garage to the other. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“I was gonna head back,” he mutters, half-choked on a cloud of frigid dust. He doesn’t need to look to know his mom is frowning, that thoughtful twist of her lips he’s inherited entirely. The same one Dexter pulls when he’s figuring out a particularly tough four piece puzzle. “I’m _fine_ , mom.”

Patrick’s mom is many things; confidante, care-giver, provider of late night telephone advice about climbing fevers and hacking coughs shaking tiny chests. But she isn’t an idiot and she isn’t fooled. She leans up against the door and watches him, that intense and patented Mom Stare that they hand out on the way out of the maternity ward. He sags back against the boxes and glances up.

“What?”

“Have you spoken to her yet?” she asks and of course she doesn’t need to clarify that she means Becky. The keeper of the grandchild. The one with the title ‘mom’ that automatically means ‘caregiver’ until she decides she’s bored.

“I’ve tried.”

Patrick has memories, clear ones, of slipping on the ice when he was barely any older than Dexter. His first lucid, non-fragmented memory hazed over by the water-wash blur of too much time passed is plummeting face-first onto the asphalt outside their house. So much blood it stained the snow pink and gummed the fine baby hairs curling under his badly cut bangs. He would like, very much, for his mom to fix this like she dealt with that.

“Come inside,” she says instead. Instead of something that makes it all okay again. It’s not that he resents her for her inability to re-rail this endless train crash, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that she _can’t_. “The cleaning can wait. I’ll make us tea, you can—”

“No!”

The box hits the far wall in an explosion of scattering paperwork. It flutters like Stump Family confetti; report cards, pictures, macaroni art, a riotous snow globe of achievements that meant so much in the moment but seem inconsequential with time and two decades relegated to a storage box. Patrick’s always had a temper, always fought to quiet the urge to lash out because he has no idea what else to _do_.

It turns out, throwing things feels good. Kicking them even better. He hurls and he smashes boxes and files and dust-filled sleeping bags until the garage is a mess of scattered detritus.  A designated no-fly zone of rage induced destruction levelled at the unfairness of everything the world has been able to inflict on him so far. Patrick is done, bone-weary and exhausted, when he collapses to the floor. So, he does the thing he hasn’t really allowed himself to do as often as he’d like.

He cries.

He shivers insensible against Kevin’s old ski coat and wonders if there’s enough Patrick left inside of him to sustain whatever zombie-like existence he has left stretching out ahead of him. Patrick is hollow, empty, gutted entirely by the lack of his son in his life. He’s grieving for a life that isn’t lost, but might as well be to him.

So, when his mother lowers herself to the garage floor next to him, when she wraps _her_ baby in her arms, when she rocks him like he’s two once more, he succumbs to it. He lets her stroke his hair, lets her trace his tears and the swollen-sore dampness of his eyelids. There’s no objection when she calls him sweetheart, darling, fucking _Pat_. It’s all okay.

Patrick cries until there’s nothing left inside of him, until he’s wrung out and dried up and heaving dry sobs into a sweater that smells of Chanel and cinnamon tea. Then, she speaks into his hair. “Come on inside, baby.”

He goes.

On the couch and shivering, wrapped in the blanket his grandma made and sipping hot tea from old cups, he pours out his heart.

“It’s like,” he begins and then immediately pauses. What _is_ it like? “It’s like I’m two guys, you know? I’m dad and I’m Patrick and I swore I wouldn’t, you know, I wouldn’t let them overlap. Dexter is, was, _is_ my priority. You know that, right? You _know_ I’m a – _am_ I a good dad? I don’t even… I can’t… Then there’s Pete, right? And like, I know we shouldn’t. But we did and then – and she said… Oh, God. It’s just _such_ a _mess_ and I don’t – I don’t know how to fix any of it.”

There’s a careful pause. His mom sips her tea and watches the way the snowflakes swirl outside. She’ll put up the Christmas tree soon. This year there won’t be a picture taken of Dexter standing in front of it. Patrick is too exhausted to cry.

“I think you’re the most wonderful father,” she says carefully, like she’s terrified he’ll shatter if she presses too hard. In truth, he can’t deny the likelihood of that happening. “I’m not sure I tell you that enough, that’s on me,” he would like to interrupt but she squeezes his hand against worn, warm wool and continues, “from the day you found out she was pregnant, you’ve put your son ahead of everything else. You’ve sacrificed things most men twice your age wouldn’t imagine giving up for parenthood. You’re nothing at all like most young men, Patrick. You’re – you’re not just a good dad, you’re an _incredible_ father. I wish you could see that.”

“But—”

“No,” she raises a hand and he falls silent, years of childhood obedience kicking in with Pavlovian inevitability, “let me finish. You’re a _good_ father to the detriment of your own life. Dexter adores Pete and so do you. You _deserve_ happiness, sweetheart, no matter what she might think. Your life doesn’t have to be this or that, you’re allowed to have both, you – you have your mother’s permission to be a parent and a lover.”

“Oh God,” he groans into his cup, glasses fogging with condensation that he’s grateful for because it means he doesn’t have to look at his mother whilst she refers to him as a lover. One day, they’re going to have a long talk about appropriate topics of conversation. “Do you _have_ to?”

Patrick’s mom smiles. It’s a Mom Smile. “I do. Promise me you’ll try.”

“I’ll try,” he agrees, already knowing he probably won’t. Not yet. “Did I tell you what Pete’s dad said? He wants all of the evidence, everything, that shows I’ve been sole custodian of Dexter since she left. He says – he thinks I’ve got a really good case.”

“You’re going to get him back,” she says, voice soft. “I’m so proud of you, you know that?”

Patrick shapes his mouth to a grin. It doesn’t feel natural. “I know.”

*

Patrick has never been entirely confident in his role as sole custodian of a tiny, entirely dependent human being. He’s close to certain that he’s met all of the major goals; feeding, clothing, enough exposure to Sesame Street to hopefully avoid a future career selling crack on street corners in Gage Park. But, honestly? He’s never been entirely sure that what he’s done is _enough_.

However, he’d like, very much, to retract any previous fleeting notions of freedom that may have crossed his mind. This is the shower of snow globe glitter but bitter and ugly, he remembers each time he wished it all away, every incident of dead-eyed staring at a TV screen and wondering what was the point.

Dexter.

Dexter was _always_ the point.

The reality of it batters him in waves. He often felt entirely overwhelmed by the presence of his son from the moment the doctor handed him over. Now, he feels entirely overwhelmed by the absence of him. More than once, he’s bolted upright in bed, panicked and sweaty and lunging for the door, convinced he can hear desperate sobbing from the next room only to find himself staring at any empty toddler bed. He replaces it with his own desperate sobbing which gives the whole thing a nice symmetry. He supposes that parenthood is an unending helix of ‘entirely overwhelmed’, cresting each desperate climb only to round the loop and crash back to the very bottom.

Can he even call this parenthood?

For tonight, distraction is delivered in the shape of hours spent bent over Pete’s printer, scanning document after document and transferring them all into a rapidly expanding file named ‘Operation Neverland’. Pete calls it this because, he says, _he’s_ Peter Pan and Dexter is his Lost Boy. Somehow, things seem a fraction less hopeless when it feels as though they’re in this together.

Patrick has never seen the evidence of Dexter’s life laid out in paperwork before, the volume is impressive. Pete’s laptop is sleek, silver and radiates an air of being more expensive than anything Patrick owns. It’s distressing to even rest his fingers against the keys, fraught with the fear of breaking it.

“Does he _really_ need every single doctor’s bill?” Patrick whines. It’s almost two in the morning. There’s a limit to how little sleep he can function on and feels like this might be it. “Like, _all_ of them? Kids get sick a _lot_.”

“That’s what he said,” Pete, wearing glasses that add a distracting luster to the copper-gold of his eyes, blinks and holds out a hand with the next one. He’s been at every appointment Patrick’s had at Wentz Senior’s impressive Gold Mile office. “You got somewhere better to be?” he asks, thick around a yawn. He realizes what he’s said around a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, fuck. I — I didn’t mean—”

“We can finish up in the morning,” Patrick offers, spine cracking like pop rocks in cola as he rolls stiff shoulders. “You’ve – you’ve been really great. Seriously.”

Pete makes a noise, a snorting laugh, gnarled around another yawn. “Any time. I miss him too, you know?”

“I know,” Patrick nods and concentrates extremely hard on unpicking the frayed knot of his shoelace, the back of his throat aching sore. He’s halfway into his shoes before he meets Pete’s eyes. “What?”

“Patrick,” says Pete, heavily inflected with teacher-voice. Patrick feels a sudden and entirely involuntary urge to complete his geometry homework. “It’s two in the morning. You’re not walking home.”

It takes Patrick a second or two to process this information, to link the inferred offer with the declared objection. _You’re not walking home_ means _you must sleep here_. He removes his eyebrows from his hairline and swallows around the large rock that seems to have taken up residence halfway down his throat.

“So, like, where _am_ I staying?” he asks with casual indifference.

The rational part of Patrick’s brain, the part that controls the stuff like paying the utility bills, is aware that this is an entirely innocent offer from a trusted friend. The part that controls his penis is less convinced and jumping to all sorts of nefarious conclusions.

“Oh,” Pete doesn’t look up from the laptop screen, clicking and rearranging and moving documents from one file to another and back again. “Uh, Joe’s at his girlfriend’s so I guess I can take his room. You’re cool with my bed, right?”

Patrick has never seen Pete’s bed. He’s suddenly eager to rectify this immediately (for reasons entirely unrelated to his previously-referenced penis) and nods at the back of Pete’s head. “Sure. Sounds fine.”

They order the papers into regimented piles of scanned and unscanned. Pete finally puts the MacBook away. He does this by tossing it haphazardly onto the couch and Patrick – visions of GarageBand software he can never afford to own dancing like specters behind the stinging throb of his eyes – would like very much to cry.

Pete makes an ordeal of closing down the apartment for the night. He checks the front door is locked a half dozen times, ricochets around switching off lights and fetching toothpaste and sweatpants and a sagging, stretched out Taking Back Sunday shirt. It’s impossibly soft and smells of Pete around the neckline. There’s every possibility it hasn’t been washed since he last wore it. Patrick hopes more than he’d ever admit in a court of law that that’s the case.

They pause between the doorways of the two bedrooms. Patrick can faintly make out the curve of Pete’s smile in the not-quite darkness. “Well,” he whispers, like there’s someone they can disturb lurking sleepy in a hidden corner of the otherwise empty apartment. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” says Patrick, just as soft. His fingers close unwillingly around the door handle, contrasting poles pushing apart. “Unless…” he starts, then bites his lip and stares at the floor.

“Unless?” They’re apparently doomed to spend the rest of their lives standing stupid outside of bedroom doors, inanely repeating one another until one or both of them fucking _dies_.

He clears his throat. “Unless you wanted to sleep in your bed.” And then, to make sure that there’s no misunderstanding, he adds, “With me.”

Because Pete is sensible, rational and not driven entirely by the urge to fill an endless void with something that feels warmer, softer, he says, “You said—”

“I didn’t mean,” Patrick cuts in before Pete can fuck this up and make it awkward, “I’m so – so fucking _lonely_ right now. I – please?”

Pete considers him with the kind of wariness generally reserved for things that bite or sting. It’s not that Patrick is entirely emotionally stunted, he _understands_ it. The constant back and forth of a pushmi-pullyu, the unfairness of it clear in the uncomfortable way Pete tugs at the hem of his t-shirt.

“You don’t want us to be together,” Pete points out. He does this with care and hesitance, clearly believing that Patrick’s vulnerability outweighs his own. “But you want us to sleep together.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I don’t really know what I want.”

Open and vulnerable, Patrick presents the dark red guts of himself for Pete to examine. He tilts his chin, defiant, arrogance he doesn’t feel sufficient facade to keep the tears from falling. Patrick isn’t alone but he _is_ lonely and deprivation isn’t bringing Dexter back.

Pete doesn’t move, his hand still loosely fisted around the door, his eyes some faraway place between Patrick and possibly the next dimension over. Patrick slips into the bedroom and onto the sheets to spare them both any further humiliation. He burns, skin red-hot and itchy, burrowing his embarrassment in the wrap of sheets that smell of Pete.

It takes less than a minute for the opposite side of the mattress to dip, a gust of cool air chased by warmth like a weather front. They lie entirely still, several feet of pocket springs and stomach-twisting fear stretching out between them. Patrick recalls a twin bed in summer and wishes three times behind closed eyes. When he opens them, nothing has changed. The same streetlight outside still spiders gold across the ceiling, Pete’s breathing is still low and slow.

He reaches for Pete’s hand, twists their fingers together until they knot like tree roots. When their eyes meet, Pete’s are endless.

“So,” Pete says, rubbing over the back of Patrick’s knuckles with his thumb. It’s tender, designed to soothe.

Patrick isn’t thinking as he slides closer, as he brings their mouths together soft and warm. If he _were_ thinking, he would no doubt be taking this opportunity to berate himself for a spectacular display of impulsive stupidity.

Pete jerks, the ferocity of touching the third rail. “Patrick, I—”

Patrick sinks a hand into the front of his sweatpants before he can say another word. He finds Pete’s cock, soft, warm, nestled against the coarse curl of pubic hair, and takes it into his palm with reverence.

Pete makes a sound — a frustrated, strangled groan wrung from his depths — like Patrick has seized hold of his soul and squeezed it free of every drop of sensibility. It’s a noise Patrick would like to hear again, _does_ hear again, as he moves his hand slowly from the thick, stiffening base of Pete’s prick along to the soft, smooth tip and back again. When Pete opens his mouth to speak, Patrick thrusts his tongue forward instead, licking into the taste of him as he coaxes him thick, hard, beautiful in the wrap of his hand.

Pete gives, sand crumbling under the unstoppable force of the tide of Patrick’s need. He kisses back, wet and desperate, biting bruises to the curve of Patrick’s lower lip like he knows he needs the throb of his pulse somewhere other than the aching hollow of his chest. Patrick’s heart feels entirely absent, it’s reassuring to know it’s still beating.

“We don’t need to,” Pete whispers. “We can just—”

Patrick thumbs under the head, callous catching roughly on the ridged cap of Pete’s cock. Pete groans against his throat, rocking boneless into the loose curl of Patrick’s fist. He stops talking entirely. This is absolutely an improvement.

The solid press of Pete’s hipbone meets with the frantic need of Patrick’s own hard cock, grinding lazy as he leaks sticky-wet against the lining of borrowed sweatpants. He’s pretty sure they’re too big to be Pete’s which means he’s going to come in Joe’s pants. This bothers him less than it would in any and all other situations.

When Pete’s mouth finds the sensitive, nerve-bold stutter of Patrick’s pulse, the tender throb scraped by eager teeth, there’s a very real possibility that Patrick’s soul leaves his body entirely. Wrist stammering, he shudders spasming hold along the length of Pete’s cock, fingertips curling against the brackish hair prickled at the base. Pete feels like heat and hardness, velvet skin and thick, vulgar vein stretching raised along his length. He feels, tastes, somehow smells of home entirely.

“Shit,” Patrick groans, head tipped back as Pete licks along his throat, accelerant trailed on the long, dark pull of his tongue against Patrick’s skin. If there _is_ skin there right now, if it hasn’t ceased to exist and left behind nothing but burnt-raw nerves lapped warm by Pete’s mouth. “Please. C’mon, _please_.”

Fingers twisted into the fall of Patrick’s hair, Pete kisses him. He tastes his teeth and tongue and strokes wet heat along the tender, hidden flesh just inside Patrick’s lips. He bites Patrick’s mouth until he’s growling, until he’s sure he’s half a nip from tasting copper-salt bloodied brightness. Greedy kisses, desperate kisses, hauled closer, closer, closer by two handfuls of hair.

Between Pete’s legs, Patrick’s hand finds a rhythm once more.

Pete is so hard against his palm, rolling his hips with the grasp of each stroke against him, leaking thick, sticky, warm. God, _God_ , there’s no part of Patrick that doesn’t want to taste. If it wasn’t for the grip on his hair, he’d slip lower, kiss heat along each inch of Pete’s skin until he could gorge, glut himself on the thick musk taste of Pete’s cock.  He sucks Pete’s tongue instead, curls his lips to the invasion of it and rocks his hips to Pete’s.

It feels exquisite, each tingling pulse drawn slow on the long, teasing pull of his prick against his sweats. There’s a possibility that this is no longer being experienced on the relative plane of existence, that Patrick has ascended entirely. He sinks his fingernails into the hard, rigid bone of Pete’s hip and shivers sensation through each glowing nerve-ending.

Pete shakes, he trembles a fever sweat against Patrick’s hand. With a cry that can only be truly described as rhapsodic, he comes across the coppered softness of hair scattered across Patrick’s stomach. Sweat-damp and shining, head tossed back and throat working frantic, he stammers half-sense and whispered sweetness as he fucks it out into the sticky curl of Patrick’s come-slick fist. Patrick can think of no sight in this or any other lifetime that could ever be as beautiful.

Patrick is still hard but decides this doesn’t matter, bruising kisses to the fuck-flushed rawness of Pete’s mouth. They kiss endless and desperate, a last supper, devouring, tasting, glutting. Pete slides a hand around the shape of Patrick’s cock through cotton. Patrick experiences, for a moment, the ferocity of an electric shock delivered directly to the base of his spine.

“Shit, fuck,” he groans, because actual words are chasing slippery at the tip of his tongue, too caught on the way Pete’s fingers flex along the rigid length of him. “I – you don’t have to.”

“Shut up,” Pete says, pushing him onto his back and sliding lower. He pauses, frowning concentration at the way his fingertips nudge up the Taking Back Sunday shirt until it sits just at the crest of Patrick’s stomach. He leans down, laps a long, wet stroke through the streaked mess of his own come then looks up through his lashes. That electric shock hammers to the tips of Patrick’s toes and jolts a twitch along his prick. “I want to make you come.”

As Pete sinks the decadent plush of his mouth down over his cock, Patrick suspects this may take less time than Pete is anticipating. Pete sucks him past the point of rationality, tongue sliding slippery against every sensitive ridge and crevice. Eyes open, copper-gold and knowing, he watches the way Patrick falls apart under the heat of his touch.

When he nudges a fingertip gently between Patrick’s cheeks, the world explodes to thermite and starlight. Patrick is the epicenter of his own big bang, exploding out and out from the point of detonation centered some glorious place at the base of his cock. Every atom of his being is torn apart, rearranged and recentered as he pulses, tingles, _throbs_ into the willing warmth of Pete’s mouth. Fingers knotted in the  sheets, he rocks his hips into the give of Pete’s throat and considers the likelihood of losing consciousness as his vision washes white and gold and beautiful, endless blue.

Sometime later, Pete kisses him. He licks gloriously into his mouth, tasting of Patrick’s cock, his orgasm bitter sharp on his lips. As ardour rolls back with the inevitability of low tide, Patrick feels guilt creeping insidious from the shadows. He should _not_ be doing this, _thinking_ about this, right now. It is, it transpires, entirely possible to go from aroused to self-loathing in under five minutes.

“What’s wrong?” Pete asks warily. Patrick knows he’s already thinking in shades of rejection.

He curls a hand around Pete’s bicep and holds him close, their foreheads touching as he whispers. “I – I shouldn’t have. I took advantage and – and I’m uh, I’m being selfish because he’s—”

Pete cuts him off with fingers pushed soft to his lips. “Hey, stop that. You’re a _great_ dad. You’re, like, the fucking _best_. You’re allowed to be happy. Please, _please_ let yourself be happy.”

Patrick considers this for a moment, fingers stroking through the product-sticky slick of Pete’s hair. He wonders, absently and entirely removed, what it looks like without the chemicals, without relaxers and flat iron and whatever else Pete assaults it with. He rubs his thumb along the curve of Pete’s cheekbone and tries not to think about an empty bedroom back in his apartment. For tonight, all that matters is that he’s not in a half cold bed.

“I don’t want to promise you something I wind up fucking up,” he whispers into the dark and over the pull of Pete’s breathing. “I can’t think about anything else until I have him back.”

“No more talking,” Pete murmurs, mouth brushing soft against Patrick’s earlobe. “Sleep. I promise you, when you wake up none of this will seem half as bad as it does right now.”

Patrick can see no fathomable way in which that could possibly be true. But it’s close to three in the morning now and the orgasm is playing hell with his already thrice-fucked circadian rhythm. He closes his eyes and counts jelly beans until sleep claims him.

*

The interesting thing is this: Pete is entirely right.

In the morning, things both improve and implode entirely with a phone call from Peter Wentz’s office and a single sentence.

“Patrick, we have a hearing date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so, next week is the final chapter! I’m super excited to share it with you guys so here’s hoping I see you next week :)
> 
> Comments and kudos are amazing or come and chat to me on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Welcome to the final chapter of what has become affectionately known as babydaddytrick! I really hope you guys have enjoyed it so far and all that’s really left to do is, uh, let you get on with it and read the damn chapter, I suppose!
> 
> See you on the other side!

This is it.

This is the fourth defining moment in Patrick’s life. It seems both poetic and indicative of how little money he has to spend on tailoring that he’s greeting it in the same suit as the second, back when he was smiling scared in front of the scholarship panel at Northwestern. He sends a silent thank you to whichever Gods are responsible for having the good grace to at least provide him with the shoulders to fill the jacket this time.

Patrick has done precisely everything wrong. He has resolutely failed to procure eight hours of restful sleep, trading his bed for snatched moments of dreamless silence on Pete’s couch, caught between chapters of law texts he doesn’t understand. He’s forfeited a nutritious and hearty breakfast in favor of half a cereal bar vomited back into the toilet bowl. His stomach growls unhelpfully.

His mom has bought a plushie. It sits on Dexter’s freshly made up bed in Patrick’s apartment, a sweet-faced teddy bear in a Cubs cap and letterman jacket. Patrick can barely breathe around the knot of anxiety that the bear will never be held by its owner.

“Stop pulling at it,” Pete swats at his hand as it drifts entirely unconsciously towards the knot at his throat. “That’s the best double windsor I’ve tied in my _life_ and if you ruin it, I swear to God…”

Precisely what Pete will do to him is lost in the tap of expensive dress shoes against tile. Pete’s dad (‘Call me Peter’) approaches in an expensive suit. Patrick’s anxiety ticks with hyperactive accuracy from lowkey to crippling. He staggers to his feet, numb below the knees and above the neck, curiously floating across the room as his vision blurs.

“How’re you feeling?” Peter asks. Patrick wonders what the consequences might be for laughing in the face of his legal representative. Instead, he makes a noise like he’s choking to death on his tongue — largely because that’s _precisely_ what he’s doing — and fights to stop his eyes from rolling back in his head. Pete’s dad grins broadly and claps him on the shoulder. “Excellent!”

“I can’t do this,” he gasps, choking-sore on stuttering lungs. “Oh God, I — I—”

In the vague middle distance, he’s almost aware of Becky moving into the waiting room. Black suit like she’s going to a funeral, expensive haircut and perfume he remembers lingering in the fabric of their bedsheets and Dexter’s sweater when she dropped him back home. Patrick takes the metaphorical punch to the stomach with a sucked-in gasp, leaning into Pete’s side a little as he thumps back down to his seat.

“Hey,” Pete takes his hand, defiant and challenging, chin tilted bold-beautiful and reckless. Across the room, Becky scowls. “Come on, look at me,” Patrick does, meets wide eyes shaded copper-gold and glowing, “it’s going to be _fine_. I swear to you. Just — like, promise me you won’t pass out or sweat through your jacket, okay?”

“Will I lose points for that?” Patrick asks faintly, momentarily confusing custody cases for sports he doesn’t understand.

Pete snorts softly. “I only did, like, half a poli-sci degree so don’t go ahead and quote me, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

“We’re going in,” says Peter. Patrick’s heart stutter-stammers against his ribs, apparently unsure if the best course of action is to triple its speed or give up entirely. “Are you ready?”

After a fumbled moment of blank-eyed staring, Patrick realizes this question is addressed to him. He makes some noises — pitiful, squeaking sounds that don’t qualify as English — and shrugs helplessly. Pete squeezes his hand then lets go — he _lets go_ — and Patrick glares at him, affronted at the possibility of being expected to face this alone. Like a real grown-up. Fuck, but Patrick is so far removed from ever being a real grown-up.

Patrick, pathetic, whispers. “I can’t go in there alone.”

“It’s a closed court,” Pete gestures to the seat Patrick just vacated, “I’ll be right out here. And then we’ll go get Dexter, okay?”

Pete’s optimism is sweet though Patrick is terrified that it’s also entirely misguided. His palms, crotch, pits are sweating. His _sweat_ is sweating. Patrick is going to melt, Wicked Witch style, starting at the fucking double windsor choking him like a noose. Peter takes off towards the courtroom and, with a gentle shove in the small of his sweaty, sweaty back, Patrick follows.

They stand. Sit. Stand again when the judge takes her seat. Patrick has never been one for reading the room but tells himself she seems nice. Pete’s dad rambles endless legalese. Becky’s lawyer parries with half-sense wrapped in Latin. The judge nods and takes notes.

The clock on the wall alternates between refusing to move and barreling on with terrifying speed. Patrick doesn’t understand most of what’s being said. He can’t say for certain if this is his lack of verbal comprehension of if the stress of the situation has rendered him incapable of holding legal capacity. Someone should tack a sign to his chest ‘DO NOT ENTER - TEMPORARILY OUT OF ORDER’.

She questions Becky first.

“Tell me, Miss Linton, when the relationship between you and Mister Stump came to an end, who took responsibility for Dexter?”

Becky is a blueprint of insincere crocodile tears, dabbing prettily at the corners of her eyes as she looks the judge directly in the face and lies without remorse. “I wanted to. Patrick wouldn’t let me.”

Patrick has an extensive log of sleepless nights no doubt set to turn his skin and hair entirely gray that beg to fucking differ with the validity of that statement.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he whispers. Peter’s glare is sharp.

“Did you make any attempt to resume responsibility for Dexter on a more permanent basis at any point before the incident on October twenty-fifth?” the judge asks, face entirely unreadable.

“Your honor, he was entirely unreasonable!” Either Patrick’s hearing is on the fritz (entirely possible) or Becky is actually affecting a southern drawl. “He wouldn’t listen to reason!”

“That is, generally, the accepted definition of ‘unreasonable’,” the judged acedes. “And what kind of arrangement would you like to see in place moving forward. In Dexter’s best interests.”

“Dexter’s best interests don’t involve his father,” says Becky. The land slides from beneath Patrick’s feet. There are Christmas gifts stacked in his closet, a stocking of carefully wrapped holiday cheer picked out for a child he’s sure will never get to play with any of it.

Rage boils tight in the center of his chest, heat flowing out to his fingertips as he barks a reply. “That’s _not_ true and you know it.”

He’s rebuked, of course he is, and he hangs his head looking suitably sorry.

“Mister Stump,” the judge begins and Patrick fights the urge to look around for the adult suitably qualified to respond to that moniker. He nods weakly. “I’m curious, your statement suggests that you took close to full responsibility for Dexter when the relationship broke down, is that true?”

Patrick clears is throat and, caught only on the thought of his son’s empty bed, begins to speak. “That’s true, uh — your honor.”

“Could you tell me a little more about how that worked?”

“I, uh — sure, so…” He’s managing to utter many, many syllables without speaking a single word. He bites hard onto his lip for a moment and tries again. “Dexter lived, uh, _lives_ , you know, _should_ live with me. I quit college to take care of him when he was a baby. Then he spent every other weekend with — with his mother. Uh, Becky. Can I call her that, or… Miss Linton?”

The judge offers him a smile he can’t interpret. “Miss Linton is fine. You say Dexter lived with you, how can you prove that?”

Patrick would very much like Peter to begin doing the job he’s totally _not_ paying him for and start speaking on his behalf. Instead, he reads through the list in front of him. “Dexter is enrolled at a daycare center in Chicago near my apartment, his mom — _Miss Linton_ — lives in Milwaukee. I, uh, I have doctor’s bills and my tenancy says he lives there and — and—”

Patrick can’t breathe, wheezing sharply around lungs that don’t work. He sinks his fingernails into the surface of the desk and prays that death will be swift and merciful.

“It’s okay, Mister Stump,” the judge assures him. “Take your time.”

At the table next to them, separated by four feet of tile and a wave of loathing, Becky scowls at him.

“He’s my son,” he mutters, burnt with a blush cresting from the collar of his shirt. “I — she left and I did what I had to do. What I _wanted_ to do. He lived with me and we were happy. He loves his daycare and we watch Sesame Street together — God, he’s so _smart_ , you honor — and he likes to feed the ducks on weekends. I just — I want him to come home.”

“And what kind of arrangement would you like, moving forward?”

“I just want him home,” Patrick repeats. “She can have visitation, I’d never, uh, never stop her from seeing him, but — but he needs to come home. What we had before, you know? That _worked._ ”

Patrick will not stoop to hurling insults and accusations across the courtroom. He won’t point out that his son was nothing more than an extravagant chess piece in a game he never asked to play. Instead, he forces himself to breathe and answers each and every question posed to him.

He will admit to a flicker of alarm when the judge glances at him coolly. “And what about your financial situation?” That flicker is quickly fanned, billowing bright into a towering inferno as he realizes this is it, the moment he loses any and all ground he’s gained because he’s still just a store clerk and Becky still has the upper hand.

“I — I make enough to take care of him,” he says, self-loathing curling bitter in his gut at how pathetically _pleading_ he sounds. “I always paid the bills, there was always food and heat and — and _shoes_ , oh God, your honor, he goes through _so many_ shoes, I—”

“How did Miss Linton pay child support?” she cuts him off, his endless loop of babbled nonsense, and for that he is immensely grateful.

He shifts, uncomfortable, and traces his fingertip along the woodgrain of the table. “Well. Like, she never — I mean, we didn’t hammer out anything, so she…”

“Mister Stump? Did she pay you child support whilst Dexter was living with you?”

“Uh…” Becky’s glare has ascended beyond the physical plane, the weight of it crushing him. “Not exactly…”

The judge sighs, exasperated, and turns to Becky’s lawyer. This is for the best. “Did your client pay Mister Stump child support for Dexter in the seven months he had residency?”

Patrick risks a glance across the courtroom. Becky looks as though she may be calculating how many things she could use to beat him to death before the bailiff intervenes. Someone is saying something about cash payments and Patrick’s temper, always poorly timed, frays, gives and then erupts.

“That’s _bullshit_ , Becky and you know it! I paid for _everything_ , every goddamn thing! Diapers, clothes, childcare, that was all _me!_ ”

There’s a flurry of voices, a hand in the small of his back hauling him down into his seat. Peter conveys _shut up and don’t ruin this_ so effectively in a raised eyebrow that Patrick begins to wonder precisely what bullshit Pete pulled off as a teen. He sits, red and silent, as Becky and her attorney hold a conference in whispers.

“Your honor,” says her attorney, climbing to his feet. “Would it be possible for me to discuss this with my client in private for a minute?”

“Ten minutes,” she dismisses them. They rise as she leaves.

In a tiny room just off the court, Patrick adopts his best hangdog impression and assures Peter that no, he will never swear in court again. This is an inauspicious start to his relationship with the father of the man he may or may not be in love with. He sits in silence and tries not to think about the consequences of fucking this up entirely.

Back in the court and Becky’s attorney approaches the bench. Becky, for her part, refuses to look at him. Patrick, panicked hot and sweaty, wonders how much worse this could possibly get.

“I see,” says the judge. Patrick would like very much to know what it is she can see. “Miss Linton, your attorney advises me that you’ve had something of a change of heart.” Becky stares stoically at the floor. “That, despite incurring the expense of two attorneys, this court and my time personally, you have, in fact, decided that you _don’t_ wish to pursue full residence of Dexter Stump after all. That, on reflection, you feel that Mister Stump is a suitably able parent to resume majority custody of your son, as per your previous agreement.”

At the table, Becky nods. She radiates a dark cloud of dislike. Patrick is having trouble processing everything the judge is saying but grabs at Peter’s knee nonetheless. This is wholly inappropriate. Patrick finds he doesn’t care.

“Child support,” it may be Patrick’s imagination, but the judge seems gleeful, “Miss Linton, how much do you suppose it cost Mister Stump to maintain your son for the six months after your relationship broke down? Daycare, medical bills, food, clothing. They grow at quite a rate at Dexter’s age, do they not?” Becky doesn’t respond and neither does her attorney. “Miss Linton, this court allows me to make an order deducting twenty percent of your salary for the maintenance of your son. Backdated. Mister Stump’s contribution during the past three months will be deducted from the sum you owe him. Moving forward, support will be paid each month, promptly. I would _hate_ to see you back here for non-payment, Miss Linton.”

“Your honor, I have that set aside,” Patrick objects. “I — she wouldn’t answer my calls but I _wanted_ to pay for him! He’s my _son_!”

“Mister Stump,” she turns to him directly, Patrick somehow resists the urge to point to himself in question, “I’m sorry but it seems your time has been wasted. You resume custody of your son on a twelve-days-in-fourteen basis from Monday. Miss Linton’s attorney will be in touch to communicate the details however, might I suggest a neutral third party make the pick up and drop off. The order will be forwarded to Mister Wentz on your behalf.”

Somehow, Patrick stands as the judge leaves. He’s going to have to ask Peter to explain this to him in words of no more than one syllable because it almost sounds like Dexter is coming home. In the waiting room, he falls onto Pete, heaving sobs against his chest.

“Did — did it go well?” Pete asks his dad, apparently aware that Patrick is completely unavailable for comment. “Oh God, what happened?”

“Well, you won,” Becky says, pausing in her black dress and court shoes. “Happy now?”

For a second, Patrick can’t breathe clearly enough to reply. Every tortured second of the past three months, of the months that fell before when she held his sexuality like a finely poised Sword of Damocles, press against his windpipe and rob him of rational speech. He shakes his head slowly.

“Won?” he whispers quietly. “You — you think Dexter is a prize and I _won_? He’s our _son_ . He’s _my son_ and you held him over me because you didn’t want anyone to think you’d turned me gay.” If Patrick was lost for words before it seems they’ve found him now, pouring from him, flooding the room between them as Pete holds him close with an arm around his shoulder. “You took my kid away from me. I’ll _never_ get that time back. I didn’t _win_ , I just want my son.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. She doesn’t look it. “Your mom can collect him Saturday.”

Pete, wide-eyed and smiling, whispers into his ear. “He’s coming home?”

And Patrick? He hurls himself into his arms and allows himself one final, self-indulgent sob. “He’s coming home.”

*

Patrick hasn’t slept. It’s a good thing, he thinks, that Pete’s avoids sleep like he’s allergic. It means they roamed the apartment together, sharing pizzas as they slapped green paint on Dexter’s bedroom walls. His baby nursery is now transformed; a dinosaur discovery adventure waiting to happen.

(“I’m just saying,” Pete said, dressed in a palette of green paint and wallpaper glue, “dinosaurs are like, highkey the scariest dudes in history and now we put them all over our kids bedrooms. Isn’t that a little weird?”

“I dunno,” Patrick spared him precious little concentration, distracted enough by the curve of his ass in jeans more rip than anything else, “aren’t people apex predators, too?”

“Say that to a T-Rex’s face,” Pete said, taking aim down the barrel of a loaded paintbrush, Patrick raised his hands, defenceless, “I _dare_ you.”)

The car pulls up outside, idling against the curb. If Patrick were to look closer, he’d be able to see the familiar shape of the car seat. He fumbles, hammering heart and cotton-dry throat as he stares, wide-eyed and terrified.

“What’s wrong?” asks Pete: an idiot.

Patrick hesitates. He’s rehearsed this moment a thousand times over, imagined it like replaying home movies, this; his crowning moment, the glorious warmth of reunion. He’s prepared and practiced and thought it through time and again. But what if he’s wrong?

What if, Patrick wonders, this isn’t what Dexter wants? If his son is so confused, tipturned and terrified by parental interference that nothing is the way it was before. Patrick hasn’t seen him in three months; what if Dexter doesn’t even _remember_ him?

He must say that last part out loud because Pete moves closer, an arm slung over his shoulder as he guides him towards the front steps. “Are you for real? Of _course_ he remembers you, dumbass.”

On the sidewalk, Patrick’s mom opens the back door of her station wagon. Patrick’s chest stills entirely, no breath drawn, not a single beat of his traitorous heart. Chicago is silent for a moment. She sets someone down against the asphalt, someone with dirty blond hair and serious blue eyes shaded wide and interested. Their eyes meet and fuck romance, fuck love at first sight, fuck any and all notions anyone in the universe ever had about soulmates. _This_ is the pinnacle of Patrick’s existence; watching the way his son smiles bright and golden and holds out his arms.

“ _Daddy_!”

Patrick isn’t sure, but he thinks they start running at the same time.

They skid across frosted sidewalks, sneakers slipping, sliding as every atom in Patrick’s being explodes, rearranges and slides back into place. His strides are effortless, floating weightless as tears scar salt against his skin. He drops to his knees — or maybe they give out — as he reaches him, hauling him close and shuddering in the scent, shape, feel of him.

“You’re so _big_ ,” he whispers into hair that smells of the wrong shampoo but still laced with Dexter. It feels so good to feel the way his breath blooms warm against his son’s skin. “Oh God, little _dude_ , you’re – you’re so _big_! I’m – I’m gonna have to start calling you big dude!”

“Daddy,” Dexter whispers. It sounds like coming home. “Daddy, daddy, _daddy_!”

“I’ve missed you,” Patrick declares between kisses to soft, flushed little cheeks burnt bright in the contrast of car heating and frigid January air. “Daddy’s missed you _so_ much. I love you. I love you, I love you, _I love you_ …”

“Ducks,” says Dexter definitively, a man who knows precisely what it is he wants. “Pete! Daddy! We – we go ducks.”

“He’s _talking_ ,” Patrick whispers, a punch to the gut delivered in the understanding that these are developments he won’t get to see again. “I – I…”

“Why don’t the three of you take a walk to the park while I make dinner,” his mom suggests, shoving Dexter’s hat down over his ears.

“Ducks?” Dexter asks. Patrick will never, could never, refuse him anything. “We go _now_ , daddy?”

“Yeah buddy,” he says. He swings Dexter onto his shoulders, sure he’ll never be able to breathe through any kind of separation ever again. “That sounds like a great idea.”

Pete shuffles, Bape to Bape, scratching at the back of his wrist and tugging at the leather thong he keeps there. He’s an artistic study in uncertainty, biting his lip and putting on his brave face before he’s even opened his mouth. “I’ll get going…”

“No way, you heard the kid, we’re feeding the ducks.”

Pete smiles, shy at the edges and falls into step. “You know, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to feed them in the winter. It, like, messes with them and stops them migrating and—”

“If my son wants to feed the ducks,” Patrick declares on a mouthful of billowed smoke, his breath hitting the frigid chill and aching sore down into his lungs, “then we’re feeding the damn ducks.”

“Damn ducks!” Dexter squeals, heels drumming dubstep beats into Patrick’s chest. Patrick avoids Pete’s raised eyebrow. “Pete! Pete! Look! Where Hemmy, Pete?”

“We’ll see him tomorrow,” Pete promises — and Patrick marvels that he can make these promises and mean it, “we’ll go get pizza and we’ll take Hemmy for a walk and we can watch movies and eat candy and…”

He trails off. Patrick can see the tears glittering bright at the corners of Pete’s eyes, he pretends they don’t match his own and delivers a manly shoulder punch for good measure. God, but they have _plans_ now. A lifetime of them. Not that they’ve discussed it, not really, and Patrick’s kind of stumbling shy at the thought that maybe Pete’s changed his mind. But still.

Winter in Chicago doesn’t fuck around. The sidewalks are clear but heaped high either side with ragged ranges of frozen solid, greying snowbanks. Dexter is the only one appropriately dressed as they slide on sneakers like graceless explorers. Pete shoves a hand into the small of Patrick’s back, fisting his fingers in flannel. Patrick’s ninety-eight percent convinced it’s just to keep him upright and not so he can tuck an arm around him. Over their heads, Dexter tells stories, sings songs and Patrick joins him for high-soaring harmonies that make other people stare.

Patrick, caught in his crystalized moment of bliss, cares not at all.

At the park, Dexter tosses bird seed to puffed-up, shivering Canadian geese. Pete honks at them in a French accent. The play park is an accident waiting to happen as Patrick looks up at the oatmeal sky threatening yet more snow.

“So,” he says, hoping something will occur to him before Pete looks at him. It doesn’t; that gold-glow gaze stealing his breath away. “Uh…”

Pete nudges their shoulders together. “We got him back.”

_We_. The empty half of the closet filled with mismatched hoodies; the mug in the bathroom stuffed with three toothbrushes instead of two; Dexter with two daddies. Patrick kind of likes the idea of _we_. It’s now or never.

“I was thinking,” says Patrick as Pete shivers in a hoodie that’s inappropriate for January in Chicago. It doesn’t surprise Patrick to discover that Pete, twenty-seven and a genuine grown-up, is unprepared for winter in the city he grew up in. “And how would you feel about moving in with me? With, uh — with _us,_  I suppose.”

Pete stares, slow and stupid, and seems to attempt to arrange those words into an order that mean something platonic. “I – move in?”

“Well, you said Joe’s got a place with his girlfriend,” Pete’s eyes and five different shades of desperately hopeful, glittering in the low winter sunlight as Dexter waddles after a placid-looking goose, “it’s – my place is a two bed, but I can take the couch, you can have your own room. It doesn’t have to be anything – anything _more_ , I just thought…”

Patrick watches the way Dexter quacks insults at the unflappable feathers of a disinterested duck. He’s never allowed himself to imagine a future more tangible than vaguely shaped around the three of them; some smokescreen mirage of a happily ever after set somewhere in the suburbs. His apartment is real, a series of rooms that can expand around the three of them.

“It wouldn’t be the the apartment forever,” Patrick continues hopefully. “I — maybe I could go back to school. Maybe we could get a place out in Glenview or — or Golf. Someplace with a backyard.”

Patrick’s never imagined himself as worthy of devotion. He’s the dorky single dad with an adorably cute kid, blurring into the background of toddler stay-and-plays and grocery store checkout lines. Patrick is not the leading man in a genuine John Hughes romance.

But, Patrick is wondering – heart ripe and wetmessy – why he shouldn’t take advantage of this, the most beautiful cosmic mistake working impossibly in his favor.

“Does this mean?” Pete asks, too fraught to frame it further.

Patrick can’t think of an appropriate answer, robbed speechless by the way his tongue tingles insensibly against the roof of his mouth. There are many things he’d like to say, honeyed declaration woven prettily between them. Sadly, Patrick never was much of a lyricist.

So instead, he takes Pete’s hand in both of his and brushes a kiss to his cold, bare knuckles.

Under the late-afternoon glower of gathering clouds, Pete pulls him close and kisses him. Their future, Patrick’s sure, is going to be awesome. Pete’s mouth moves to Patrick’s cheek, across his temple, smudging wet kisses until he reaches his ear.

“Daddy kissing Pete!” Dexter sing-songs, delighted. Patrick is a lifetime away from fearing those words.

Breath burning against the winter chill, Pete laughs, sobs, whispers. “Yeah. You’re stuck with me now.”

Patrick smiles.

“For as long as you’ll have me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that’s it! They all lived happily ever after, Dexter and daddy and papa Pete. 
> 
> It would be lovely to hear what you thought in the comments or over on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.
> 
> And give Dexy a squish on your way out, he likes that!


End file.
